Speaker 1: You're listening to episode eighty one of game Spot after Dark.
Speaker 1: This week, Jared Petty, formerly IGN current podcaster, joins us
Speaker 1: to talk about the Nintendo Direct. Hello and welcome to
Speaker 1: episode eighty one of GameSpot After Dark. I'm your host
Speaker 1: Jake Decker, and joining me this week is Callie Plaguey. Hello,
Speaker 1: John Luke Saypke Hi and former IGN editor current podcaster
Speaker 1: extraordinaire Jared Petty.
Speaker 2: Glad to be here. Thank you all for having me.
Speaker 1: We're so glad you're here as well.
Speaker 2: It just is this warm and fuzzy feeling inside. I
Speaker 2: enjoyed the show, so I'm like, yeah, I get to
Speaker 2: be here's some kind of a narcissist. So I'm just like,
Speaker 2: yay validation.
Speaker 3: You know, I would never in a million years refer
Speaker 3: to you as a narcissist.
Speaker 1: I was gonna say that doesn't sound like Jared the nicest.
Speaker 3: In the entire world.
Speaker 1: Jared Petty, I really do.
Speaker 2: Like crave like appreciation.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 2: I'm like, I'm terribly insecure, so it's like, oh people
Speaker 2: like me yay, like, which is not healthy in therapist
Speaker 2: that's a mood though, It's a mood totally. That's if
Speaker 2: there was ever a time for insecurity, now's the time.
Speaker 2: But right now we're here. Thank you all for having me.
Speaker 1: Anyway, thank you for joining. So normally we start this
Speaker 1: show off with what we've been playing, but since you're
Speaker 1: a guest and you have been on games Spout after
Speaker 1: Dark before, we start with the Chris from Dayton, Ohio segment. Chris,
Speaker 1: that's a little jingle we've got. We we actually have.
Speaker 1: I've explained this so many times, but the community actually
Speaker 1: made us a song. But I like hearing the host
Speaker 1: still do that song, especially when like Lucy and Timore
Speaker 1: do it, because they never actually do it in sink
Speaker 1: and it sounds funny when I line it up. But
Speaker 1: you know, Chris. But anyway, the Chris from Dayton, Ohio
Speaker 1: segment is basically just an opportunity for you to introduce
Speaker 1: yourself to our audience, tell them things about yourself, about
Speaker 1: your history with gaming, your experience with the industry, whatever
Speaker 1: you'd like to tell us. Honestly, I think the big
Speaker 1: things though, are some of your favorite genres and some
Speaker 1: of your favorite games.
Speaker 2: Excellent? Well, thank you for asking. I love talking about myself. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I'm old and I was lucky enough to be around
Speaker 2: for things like the Golden Age of arcades and cool
Speaker 2: stuff like that. So I fell in love with the
Speaker 2: video games when I was like two. When I was three,
Speaker 2: my dad got me An Atari twenty six hundred when
Speaker 2: I was five a home computer, and so I just
Speaker 2: took off playing games, and it's I've kind of been
Speaker 2: a grotesque man child ever since. However, this was never
Speaker 2: meant to be a career. I work in the games industry,
Speaker 2: but I didn't even start in the games industry until
Speaker 2: I was in my thirties. This was it was a hobby.
Speaker 2: It's something I love. It was for fun, and then
Speaker 2: I started writing for fun, got really lucky and landed
Speaker 2: a job at IgM after a few years, and now
Speaker 2: many many cycles later, I'm still doing game stuff right now.
Speaker 2: I do a thing called the Top one hundred Games podcast,
Speaker 2: which you can find it all your podcast services, where
Speaker 2: we bring guests on. Jakesbon on there, Call has been
Speaker 2: on there. We're gonna have to have John Lute now.
Speaker 2: But people come on and talk about their favorite games
Speaker 2: of all times. It's just kind of a passionate project
Speaker 2: thing and it's a lot of fun anyway, favorite genres,
Speaker 2: favorite games, out all, et cetera. I really am an
Speaker 2: eclectic game player. I like most kinds of video games,
Speaker 2: although I've never really been able to wrap my head
Speaker 2: around racing games and Pokemon's a weird blind spot.
Speaker 3: That's fair.
Speaker 2: Yeah, genre wise, I probably go to two extremes. One
Speaker 2: really simple two D platforming type stuff I really enjoy
Speaker 2: or Metrovenia, and then on the other side, crazy deep RPGs,
Speaker 2: things like Aang Band or anything that's one hundred and
Speaker 2: fifty hours long and unnecessarily frustrating, or Dwarf Fortress or
Speaker 2: stuff like that. So that's kind of the ends. I
Speaker 2: go on and favorite video game of all time Sid
Speaker 2: Myers Pirates, particularly the rare port for the nes in
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety, which is confinitive version of that game, the
Speaker 2: most important and best sandbox game ever made. A few
Speaker 2: other favorites with things like Mario three, but it's not
Speaker 2: just old game stuff. R DR two would be one
Speaker 2: of my all time favorites, for example, I absolutely adore
Speaker 2: that game. I think we're kind of living in a
Speaker 2: golden age of video gaming right now, and it seems
Speaker 2: every year brings us new classics. So yeah, that's a short,
Speaker 2: short thing. Does that cover the bases?
Speaker 1: I'd say so. I do want to give a shout out,
Speaker 1: though you did mention it, but to your Top one
Speaker 1: hundred Games podcast, because I think it is such a
Speaker 1: great idea and you get so many unique and diverse
Speaker 1: voices on that podcast just talk about some of their
Speaker 1: favorite games, and I think it's just it's really cool
Speaker 1: how sort of freeform it is. You don't really have
Speaker 1: like these are the games we need to talk about.
Speaker 1: It's just hey, what game is one of your favorites
Speaker 1: and what do you think fits here? I talked about
Speaker 1: Mass Effect, Kelly, you did Stardy Valley, right, yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And we've had folks on. It is fun because
Speaker 2: people get to come on and just talk about the
Speaker 2: games you're passionate about. These just friends, industry experts, people
Speaker 2: I like. I ate a very different, very very very
Speaker 2: different guests every week, and that's been part of the
Speaker 2: fun of it. We joke that it's the definitive Top
Speaker 2: one hundred games list of all time. It is, of
Speaker 2: course not that. What it is is really unique, unlike
Speaker 2: a curated list. You know, I used to be at IGN.
Speaker 2: We'd have to work together to build these lists. Y'all
Speaker 2: work at game Spot. You create curated lists. There's a
Speaker 2: lot of argument, there's a lot of push and pull
Speaker 2: and critical perspective. When you just bring one hundred different
Speaker 2: people on to talk about games they love and don't
Speaker 2: let them repeat, that's the only like rule. You get
Speaker 2: a very different kind of list. I think it's less
Speaker 2: critically strong, but in a weird way more fun and
Speaker 2: I've had a really good time with it. I didn't
Speaker 2: know how this was going to work out when I started.
Speaker 2: You know, I kind of half ass everything I do,
Speaker 2: So there's that end of it, but that's not it's
Speaker 2: not true out. Yeah, it's been fun.
Speaker 3: I just want to give a shout out to Redemption
Speaker 3: two Game Spots Game of the Year twenty eighteen. Good pick, Jared.
Speaker 3: And one thing that I want to tell our listeners
Speaker 3: about you, Jared, is my first memory, my first time
Speaker 3: meeting you. You had just started at IGN and I
Speaker 3: was still a freelancer for IGN, and I was in
Speaker 3: the office to pick up i think a debug console
Speaker 3: back in the days where they would give you a
Speaker 3: whole PS three to review a game on. And you
Speaker 3: walked right up to where I was and you said, hi,
Speaker 3: I'm Jared, are you new? And I felt so welcomed
Speaker 3: and I was like, I wish I'm just here picking
Speaker 3: up a thing. And I just never forgot that because
Speaker 3: you were the only person who really took the time
Speaker 3: to welcome me that day. So then it was such
Speaker 3: a delight to eventually be able to work alongside you there.
Speaker 2: Yeah you were. You were hired only a few months
Speaker 2: after that, right, Kelly, it was. It wasn't that much
Speaker 2: longer after, was it.
Speaker 3: Maybe time is weird, but yeah, it was. It really
Speaker 3: meant a lot to me at the time, and I
Speaker 3: think that says a lot about who you are. So
Speaker 3: that's what I want people to know about you. When
Speaker 3: you're being so self deprecating.
Speaker 2: You're very I really and I enjoyed working with you there.
Speaker 2: I missed that. I miss it a lot. Uh you
Speaker 2: were a fun human being to share a office. Let me.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you could interpret that lots of ways.
Speaker 2: Well, I met it in the best possible fantastic. I
Speaker 2: love the reviews work you're doing now. I can tell
Speaker 2: you that I enjoy reading it, I enjoy watching it.
Speaker 2: You do amazing work, just among just anyway. You're great
Speaker 2: at what you do and that's that.
Speaker 3: We love friendship here at GameSpot after the.
Speaker 1: Game Spot Friendship podcast.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but see Cally's given the good account where I'm like, hey, call,
Speaker 2: but she's not mentioned the part where I forgot who
Speaker 2: was the first like three times I'm had him. I'm
Speaker 2: sure he does remember I kept meeting Jake and forgetting
Speaker 2: who he was, which was just horrible in every possible way.
Speaker 2: That that happened too. Please don't hate me with too
Speaker 2: sweet a brush. Cal That other part absolutely happened, And
Speaker 2: that's for John and Luke. I haven't decided what I'm
Speaker 2: either going to really remember him and be nice humor
Speaker 2: completely forget him every.
Speaker 1: Time I don't.
Speaker 3: Those are the two Jared's You get my name helps.
Speaker 4: I feel like I have a unique enough name that
Speaker 4: people at least like remember that. They're like, oh John Luke, right, yeah,
Speaker 4: like the star trek Man.
Speaker 1: Yeah. He also we also met each other at bars
Speaker 1: at like in the evening and everyone was drinking and whatnot.
Speaker 1: It was in an hour and a half long podcast
Speaker 1: where we got to talk about games.
Speaker 2: There is that part too, You're right about that.
Speaker 1: But anyway, this is a video game podcast and we
Speaker 1: should talk about video games at least a little bit.
Speaker 1: So why don't we get to what we've been playing
Speaker 1: this week? Kelly? Do you want to start off? Sure?
Speaker 3: You know, I'm kind of a broken record at this point.
Speaker 3: I'm still playing a Persona five Royal getting pretty far
Speaker 3: along kind of like getting to the actual like new
Speaker 3: Royal stuff. So I'm pretty excited about that. I love
Speaker 3: the game so much. I wish that older woman wouldn't
Speaker 3: hit on you. But other than that, definitely ten out
Speaker 3: of ten GameSpot dot Com. And then, uh, I am
Speaker 3: always playing Animal Crossing. But an interesting thing that I've
Speaker 3: been doing as I started, I mentioned this I think
Speaker 3: last time I was on I started an Animal Crossing
Speaker 3: Instagram account and I found I have uncovered an entire
Speaker 3: world and it has been very fun. And this new
Speaker 3: thing that I'm trying is, uh, there's a user on
Speaker 3: the on Instagram. I was gonna say on Animal Crossing Instagram.
Speaker 3: It's not a different app or anything. But they have
Speaker 3: biweekly decorating like design challenges, so it'll just be like
Speaker 3: a pro and like, oh, here's like a color you
Speaker 3: have to use, items you can't use, an item you
Speaker 3: have to use based on this theme and so I
Speaker 3: entered for the first time for the University common room
Speaker 3: theme and it's been a while since I was in
Speaker 3: one of those, so I tried my best.
Speaker 1: It looks very good and people should follow your Inky
Speaker 1: Crossing Animal Crossing account.
Speaker 3: Thank you and shout out to Jaku did the editing
Speaker 3: on the photo.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it turns out that key. I mean, there's like
Speaker 1: a whole animal crossing photo community that brings in their
Speaker 1: photos to light room influencers sell light room presets they
Speaker 1: got to use, you know, like yeah, well that's the thing,
Speaker 1: like you can't even get raw footage off your switch
Speaker 1: as is so or raw screenshots. I don't know, it was.
Speaker 1: It's tough to work with, but I find it so
Speaker 1: interesting that they're influencers who make light room presets and
Speaker 1: sell them. That is something I see, like I don't know,
Speaker 1: Peter McKinnon and other like photography YouTubers they're always trying
Speaker 1: to push and it's like, oh, yeah, I guess it
Speaker 1: makes sense for them to have that on animal crossing too.
Speaker 4: I'm picturing someone like bringing like they're capturing on like
Speaker 4: a showgun like inferno so that they can get it
Speaker 4: like the most raw like quality. They can get just
Speaker 4: the best.
Speaker 1: They're like twelve hundred dollars animal crossing screenshots set up.
Speaker 3: It actually is pretty intense though, because most of like
Speaker 3: the big name uh animal crossing people. Back in the day,
Speaker 3: we would call that a big name fan or a BNF,
Speaker 3: but I don't think anybody uses that anymore. But uh,
Speaker 3: they will always source what preset they used, and it'll
Speaker 3: be like lightroom preset by at and then like it'll
Speaker 3: be like animal Crossing two o two, you know, like
Speaker 3: somebody's like animal crossing user name and it's all like.
Speaker 1: It's this spring of people.
Speaker 3: Yeah, who will be like, oh, this is my uh
Speaker 3: pre set for CAF Specifically, it's called Moco late and
Speaker 3: it costs five dollars and I love it. I'm so
Speaker 3: here for it. But I get them for free because
Speaker 3: Jake has a light round.
Speaker 2: What are these? What are the essential elements of a
Speaker 2: great animal crossing screenshot? What goes in? I mean, what
Speaker 2: is our subject matter? What do we need to make
Speaker 2: sure is captured? What ambiance needs? Uh is is absolutely
Speaker 2: essential to a perfect animal crossing screenshot.
Speaker 3: That is a good question, I mean that is the
Speaker 3: eternal question, right, We're always chasing that white white whale
Speaker 3: here on the animal Crossing Instagram uh community, but I
Speaker 3: noticed a lot of uh, a lot of people editing
Speaker 3: specifically the saturation and the contrast, because uh, animal crossing
Speaker 3: as a game is pretty uh colorful in a more
Speaker 3: cartoony way. So a lot of the like really artsy designs,
Speaker 3: like people like one of the challenges a while back
Speaker 3: was like European restaurant, like make a European restaurant room,
Speaker 3: and a lot of those are like really like dark mood.
Speaker 3: Lighting completely changes the color palette. So that's a big
Speaker 3: part of the editing is people really want to either
Speaker 3: up the saturation of certain colors or like make the
Speaker 3: color palette more muted. And then there's a couple of
Speaker 3: different like predominant design themes. So a really big one,
Speaker 3: which I mostly see on Twitter now is like cottage
Speaker 3: core and it's just like a lot of like plants
Speaker 3: and like cottagy items strewn around an island. And then
Speaker 3: another big one right now is like Japanese rural or
Speaker 3: like Japanese city, so people will do like really like
Speaker 3: trash everywhere, like bit like bright lights, dirt roads, like
Speaker 3: people will make onsen outside and like do all this stuff.
Speaker 3: So my island theme is rural, but I'm going for
Speaker 3: like a driving through the middle of nowhere California kind
Speaker 3: of vibe orchards, lots of trash still, like like chain
Speaker 3: link fences, bus stop kind of stuff. But I guess
Speaker 3: I have a little bit of Japanese influence in there,
Speaker 3: because I got this like crazy fish market thing going
Speaker 3: on right now. But yeah, so depending on the esthetic
Speaker 3: you're going for, people will do different things. A lot
Speaker 3: of people will like, there's like a hack you can
Speaker 3: do for the Switch. It's like it invalidates your warranty
Speaker 3: to do it, so I wouldn't advocate for doing it,
Speaker 3: and I haven't done it myself, but it gives you
Speaker 3: full control of the camera. So some people take these
Speaker 3: like crazy impossible screenshots by hacking into the Switch camera.
Speaker 3: Wow's it's a whole it's a whole world.
Speaker 2: Can you make an Animal Crossing screenshots that look like
Speaker 2: a tool video?
Speaker 1: Like?
Speaker 2: I mean, I hope.
Speaker 3: If you try very hard, maybe or.
Speaker 2: Maybe like Moody Snyder cut promo images.
Speaker 1: Like oh.
Speaker 4: Yeah, there was something like making movie trailers in Animal Crossing,
Speaker 4: like very shortly after it came out. I want someone
Speaker 4: to recreate that Snyder cut trailer that they just put
Speaker 4: out last week in an it's like.
Speaker 3: We live in a society, but.
Speaker 2: Exactly Tom tom Nook is Stefan Wolf.
Speaker 1: Jean Luke, what have you been up to?
Speaker 4: I'm checking out Bowser's Fury, which is the expansion, standalone
Speaker 4: add on thing that they included with the remaster of
Speaker 4: Super Mario three D World. It's a delight. It is
Speaker 4: maybe my favorite game of the year, even though it's
Speaker 4: like a weird add on thing, it's so good. It's
Speaker 4: for the who don't know. It's basically they're using like
Speaker 4: the assets of three D World, but unlike three D World,
Speaker 4: which is sort of like inspired by like two D Mario,
Speaker 4: but it's in three D. It has a fixed camera.
Speaker 4: This is like full on like Mario Odyssey style, like
Speaker 4: proper three D Mario. So and then it like is
Speaker 4: using like Mario Sunshine like elements, like you're picking up
Speaker 4: shines in this one, but everything's cat themed, so they're
Speaker 4: all like cat shines, and every enemy is is like
Speaker 4: a cat. I mean, I'm sure you've seen it. Like
Speaker 4: there's like the seagulls a cat, and the bushes are
Speaker 4: cats and the grass is literally cat for so it's
Speaker 4: all cat themed. It's wonderful, and it's just it's so
Speaker 4: darn good, like if you like, like uh man even
Speaker 4: know how to say it, Like it's just they've you
Speaker 4: get this like perfect bite size, like four to five
Speaker 4: hour like Mario three D experience that is just like
Speaker 4: I wasn't expecting to get, you know, because it's like
Speaker 4: Mariodysty came out, I think it was twenty seventeen, and
Speaker 4: then it's like, Okay, I'm not getting a new three
Speaker 4: D Mario for like ten years, and the Nintendo's like, hey,
Speaker 4: we just threw in this like mini three D Mario
Speaker 4: Adventure into this game, and it's it's so so well done,
Speaker 4: and they're like all the puzzles are they're just like
Speaker 4: experimenting with like new concepts and ideas. Something that makes
Speaker 4: it really unique is it's all one giant map, so
Speaker 4: instead of like you know, traveling to like a different
Speaker 4: location or like kind of going back to like an overworld,
Speaker 4: instead it's like you just hop on I don't know
Speaker 4: what he's called. He's that little dinosaur that you let
Speaker 4: see plusy pleusy yes, so you hop on plessy and
Speaker 4: then you just like ride over in the water to
Speaker 4: like the next island, and then it's like okay, you're
Speaker 4: in the next level, and then like that level has
Speaker 4: like five different shrines that you can go collect and
Speaker 4: you're kind of bouncing back and forth between them. It's
Speaker 4: just like classic like Peak Nintendo like good that just
Speaker 4: like came out of nowhere, Like I really wasn't expecting it,
Speaker 4: and I like could beat the thing in like a
Speaker 4: couple hours, Like I just marathon through it because I
Speaker 4: was having such a good time with it. It's if
Speaker 4: you like three D Mario, I like highly recommend it.
Speaker 4: I really wish they they so I get why they
Speaker 4: maybe didn't want to release it as like a separate
Speaker 4: thing because it is sort of a short experience and
Speaker 4: maybe they didn't want to set people's expectations or want
Speaker 4: to maybe didn't feel comfortable selling as its own thing.
Speaker 4: But like it's I wouldn't want to say, I don't know,
Speaker 4: it's like I almost want to be like it's worth
Speaker 4: getting the whole thing just to just to play that,
Speaker 4: Like a three D three D world is also fantastic,
Speaker 4: So if you haven't played that, I do highly recommend it.
Speaker 4: But even like if you've played three D World, then
Speaker 4: you were like, oh, I don't know about playing it again.
Speaker 4: I'm like, hey, the Basswards theory really really good Mario game.
Speaker 1: So I had no idea. It was like a I
Speaker 1: thought it was just extra levels for Mario three D World.
Speaker 4: What I thought.
Speaker 1: I figured that's it was until our video review. I
Speaker 1: watched it, and then I realized, oh no, this is
Speaker 1: a separate game, which is interesting.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's basically a whole new thing.
Speaker 2: Is it the Odyssey engine and the obviously team do
Speaker 2: we know like it? When I saw the previews, it
Speaker 2: looked so much like Odyssey, the way that it was
Speaker 2: the characters were moving around. I wondered if we knew
Speaker 2: anything like that.
Speaker 4: I was trying to figure that out because I think,
Speaker 4: like the models are more like all the characters in
Speaker 4: the art assets feel like they're from three D World.
Speaker 4: Like Mario was like a little more simplistic. He doesn't
Speaker 4: have like the crazy like detail on his mustache the
Speaker 4: way he does in like Odyssey. But then you open up,
Speaker 4: like the map and like the map design and like
Speaker 4: the little like icons and UI look like straight out
Speaker 4: of Odyssey. And so it's like there's some weird fusion
Speaker 4: of the two going on.
Speaker 3: Yeah, our reviewer team though.
Speaker 4: I think it's maybe the same like development team that
Speaker 4: made Odyssey doing Fury.
Speaker 3: Yeah, our reviewer had the same question. He's like, I
Speaker 3: it feels like the Odyssey engine, but we weren't sure.
Speaker 3: But regardless, I think Nintendo really said capboy Renaissance and
Speaker 3: then made this game they called that because catboys are
Speaker 3: everywhere on the internet right now.
Speaker 2: Baby, Yeah, I've got my copy already, but it's on
Speaker 2: my backlog because there's a few other things I'm working
Speaker 2: through right now. I really can't wait to play it.
Speaker 2: Odyssey is one of my all time favorite video games,
Speaker 2: and so the opportunity to play something that that's got
Speaker 2: that heart and soul beating in it, plus and in
Speaker 2: three D World's just an amazing game. Anyway. But when
Speaker 2: I saw the preview, I got really excited because I
Speaker 2: was like, was this DLC for Odyssey.
Speaker 3: That was cut?
Speaker 2: And I was like, no, maybe somebody went, well, we
Speaker 2: could sell it as DLC, or build this a DLC,
Speaker 2: or we could attach it to a WEU product give
Speaker 2: people extra value, and there's probably a chance that's going
Speaker 2: to get into more hands that way. Who knows what
Speaker 2: internal discussions went on there. I've been waiting for an
Speaker 2: Odyssey two or Odyssey DLC announcement for a long time
Speaker 2: that's actually level related. But I'm wondering if COVID maybe
Speaker 2: got in the way of that and this was a
Speaker 2: good plan to get around that. I don't know. I'm
Speaker 2: just happy to hear John Luke that that it's more
Speaker 2: good open world three D Mario because the people at
Speaker 2: Nintendo building those games right now understand how to build
Speaker 2: those levels like nobody I've ever seen video games. I'm
Speaker 2: blown away by how consistently good the quality of level
Speaker 2: design was throughout Odyssey. So I really can't wait to
Speaker 2: play this.
Speaker 4: Yeah, one hundred percent. And it feels just like like
Speaker 4: it feels like it's a precursor to like an even
Speaker 4: better Mario game in the future. Like they like like
Speaker 4: it's it's good, like they everything. I think it's perfect.
Speaker 4: But on top of that, you look at like what
Speaker 4: they're doing with like the way it's like one seamless
Speaker 4: open world, and it's like they're they're messing with something
Speaker 4: that Like I feel like we could see a future
Speaker 4: Mario game where it's like you know, open world style
Speaker 4: Mario where there is no you know, like loading between
Speaker 4: different areas. It's just one continuous map that you go
Speaker 4: from area to area. Like, I'm super excited to see
Speaker 4: what that team does next after this.
Speaker 2: It's a super Mario world.
Speaker 1: That would be or they'd call it the new They
Speaker 1: call it new super.
Speaker 3: Nailed it.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 4: And then very briefly I'll touch on the other thing
Speaker 4: I was playing, which is Destiny Too. This is my
Speaker 4: Destiny to minute to talk about Destiny Too, because I
Speaker 4: still play that game. They just put out a brand
Speaker 4: new mission called the Presage. I think that's how you
Speaker 4: say that, And it's maybe my favorite thing that they've
Speaker 4: put in that game so far. It's so good. It's
Speaker 4: it's really really good. So to set it up, Destiny
Speaker 4: has what they call like secret missions, which comes from
Speaker 4: the fact that they one time they just like put
Speaker 4: this mission in the game, didn't tell anyone, and people
Speaker 4: found it. This one not so much like it's it's
Speaker 4: kind of it's kind of easier to find it, and
Speaker 4: people figured it out right away because they knew it
Speaker 4: was coming. But essentially it's like these sort of more
Speaker 4: experimental missions where where they feel more like I guess,
Speaker 4: like a single player mission where you're kind of given
Speaker 4: this freedom to explore around, and they kind of mix
Speaker 4: in like puzzle solving and platforming with combat encounters. And
Speaker 4: so this mission, you are boarding a derelict ship that
Speaker 4: you need to like investigate because there's like a guardian
Speaker 4: who went missing, and it's got this fantastic atmosphere where
Speaker 4: it feels like alien and like dead space vibes where
Speaker 4: you're going through these like tunnels, like you're going through
Speaker 4: like the vents, and you're the sound design is like fantastic,
Speaker 4: where you're hearing the scratching and clawing, and you know
Speaker 4: there's like this horrible monster that you can't you don't
Speaker 4: know what it is. And then you're discovering like dead
Speaker 4: bodies and like this really like weird, like alien fungus
Speaker 4: that you've never seen in the game before, and it's
Speaker 4: it's so it's there's like this air of like mystery
Speaker 4: about it that it's just like a level of atmosphere
Speaker 4: that I feel like Destiny has a hard time nailing
Speaker 4: because it's a live service, like you're kind of meant
Speaker 4: to go through and just like repeatedly do it and
Speaker 4: You can play this mission with friends, but if you
Speaker 4: are to play it, I highly recommend playing it single player.
Speaker 4: Like I just had the headphones on and I was
Speaker 4: just like sucked in it. It reminded me of like
Speaker 4: Bungee at its best during the Halo franchise, Like like
Speaker 4: just the level of like atmosphere and level design, the
Speaker 4: combat encounters. There is a combat encounter because it's a ship.
Speaker 4: There's a combat encounter where you go to a hangar
Speaker 4: and that hanger looks straight up like the hanger from
Speaker 4: a Halo two at the beginning of that game. Like
Speaker 4: they they are just like pulling out all the stops
Speaker 4: of like all the tricks they've learned and how they've
Speaker 4: been making games, and it it feels like this is
Speaker 4: it's like the that's more of what I want out
Speaker 4: of this game. Like I like, I like Dustin quite
Speaker 4: a bit. I like kind of what it is, and
Speaker 4: I like it's social aspects, but like this to me
Speaker 4: is like maybe like the one of the best, Like Pure.
Speaker 4: It feels very old school in how you're like you're
Speaker 4: solving puzzles and they introduce like a mechanic and then
Speaker 4: you have to like, okay, I use this mechanic to
Speaker 4: get through these doors, and then they kind of slowly
Speaker 4: ramp that up and it kind of has like a
Speaker 4: half life quality to it where you're like, Okay, now
Speaker 4: I need to platform over here, and then incorporate that
Speaker 4: with the puzzle mechanic. It's just so good. It's like, oh, wow,
Speaker 4: this is what I want. I want more of this. Granted,
Speaker 4: I bet that took a really long time to make,
Speaker 4: so I don't know how much of that you're gonna
Speaker 4: get in the future, but I think it is fantastic.
Speaker 4: It's I don't know if i'd say, like everyone hop
Speaker 4: back into Destiny because if you know, if you if
Speaker 4: you left Destiny for whatever reason, like, it's still very
Speaker 4: much that game, but it's it's worth I think if
Speaker 4: you're somebody who really likes like like a traditional like
Speaker 4: bungeee style like single player like experience, it's worth checking out.
Speaker 1: Can I like, if I reinstalled Destiny after this and
Speaker 1: played it. When I build with a play it would
Speaker 1: have to grind like six hundred levels.
Speaker 4: You wouldn't have to grind six hundred light levels to
Speaker 4: grind a little bit. I think you also do need
Speaker 4: to own the current season Pass season thirteen to play it,
Speaker 4: so there's a little bit of a buried entry unfortunately,
Speaker 4: which I do think is a shame. They should just
Speaker 4: let people play that level just.
Speaker 3: For free, to be like, this is what we can do.
Speaker 3: I want to while we're on the topic of Destiny,
Speaker 3: I'm going to go to the Destiny names Twitter out
Speaker 3: because I saw one today that was really good and
Speaker 3: I just want to share it with everyone here. It
Speaker 3: was Drifters Little pug Champ. So that's still alive and well,
Speaker 3: I think I'm still weird Vex buto okay, and Destiny.
Speaker 3: But it's a bummer that it's hard to get into
Speaker 3: because that sounds incredible, Like, as you know, hearing the
Speaker 3: music from Halo makes me cry. I don't understand fully
Speaker 3: why that happens, but it does. And to hear that
Speaker 3: it reminds you so much of like Halo, like the highlights,
Speaker 3: like at its at Bunge's Peak. Oh, that makes me
Speaker 3: want to read download This game is so bad.
Speaker 4: It's got like flood vibes with like the horror stuff,
Speaker 4: and then the combat it's got like you know, like
Speaker 4: rinded me and fighting the elites. The music you mentioned music.
Speaker 4: The music's really good. It's just like, right, Bungee can
Speaker 4: make really damn good like shooters, Like they know how
Speaker 4: to make that stuff, and that game's kind of got
Speaker 4: such a the community. He's been sort of an uproar
Speaker 4: for that game recently. For got some baggage, got some
Speaker 4: baggage and the community's kind of had enough recently that
Speaker 4: I won't get into, but everyone is like, oh, this
Speaker 4: is very good. So like props to Bungee, like they
Speaker 4: still know how to make some some damn good video games.
Speaker 1: Jared, what have you been playing?
Speaker 2: You don't have to bounced around between a couple of things.
Speaker 2: I mentioned a backlog earlier and not getting to Bousards
Speaker 2: Ferry yet, but that's because I've been distracted by a
Speaker 2: couple of things. First, for some reason, some wonderful human
Speaker 2: being took four very good old video games I love
Speaker 2: that haven't been over reissued, you know some It's weird
Speaker 2: how reissuing classic games work. Some of them we get
Speaker 2: thirty times, say any Natato first party game practically, and
Speaker 2: then others we never get. And this is one of
Speaker 2: the later ones there are. These four games are are
Speaker 2: from a series called Turriken which isn't gonna mean a
Speaker 2: lot to I think most Americans, but was a huge
Speaker 2: deal in the sixty four Amiga scene and in Britain
Speaker 2: in particular. I kind of wish Lucy were here for
Speaker 2: that one, because she would almost certainly have heard of Hurrican.
Speaker 2: Has anybody ever played a Hurricane game?
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 3: Yeah, we hear we hear it gas but after dark
Speaker 3: have heard of that because of a little video called
Speaker 3: Update Day. Our audience knows all about that, and that
Speaker 3: is featured in an excellent song. If you haven't watched it, Jared,
Speaker 3: I highly recommend it.
Speaker 2: I think I've completely missed this and I'm sad about it. Okay, Well,
Speaker 2: I've been playing turik In again, and particularly Terrikan two,
Speaker 2: which of the four is the best one. It's based
Speaker 2: on the Amiga port. It's a straight emulation year, as
Speaker 2: I can tell, but they've done wonderful things. One of
Speaker 2: the problems with the Amiga is it had a one
Speaker 2: button joystick, which, if you're really, really, really really lucky,
Speaker 2: you could upgrade to a two button through arcane and
Speaker 2: frustrating means, but most people were forced to play with
Speaker 2: one button. In the shooter Turikan two short version is
Speaker 2: kind of Metroid meets Contra. It's like at the shooty
Speaker 2: feel a Contra with lots of weapons, and it's really
Speaker 2: fast and colorful with some of the exploring stuff for Metric,
Speaker 2: and they fit together really well. I've been playing turk
Speaker 2: in too. It's even better than I remember, and with
Speaker 2: a modern controller it's a delight. So this packet, all
Speaker 2: four Turkey games are good that are in the packet.
Speaker 2: Two is the definitive one. You gotta play. It's thirty bucks,
Speaker 2: I think right now. I bought mine on PS five.
Speaker 2: Can't recommend it enough for people who want to play
Speaker 2: an absolutely superb like side scrolling shooter that they haven't
Speaker 2: played before and one of the really best in the business.
Speaker 2: And at first you're gonna be like, what's the deal?
Speaker 2: Once you start figuring out how all the weapons work,
Speaker 2: the fact that you can turn into a Samas bull
Speaker 2: chainsaw blade forever and bounce around levels like sonic mowing
Speaker 2: things down, it's great. It's a really wonderful game. So
Speaker 2: that's a quick mention. I so recently I went back
Speaker 2: to western North Carolina where I grew up, and I'm
Speaker 2: going to be here for a while. Kind of hiding
Speaker 2: from from COVID. I figured if I was going to
Speaker 2: be an isolation, I would do it in a beautiful
Speaker 2: place where I could take walks up forest, mountain sides
Speaker 2: and stuff. So I we're actually expecting an ice storm tonight,
Speaker 2: so hopefully the power doesn't go off hearing this. But
Speaker 2: that got me. I've been spending all of time in tranquility.
Speaker 2: I'm literally living on a farm right now, and I
Speaker 2: pulled Breath of the Wild back up. I'm like, real
Speaker 2: world tranquility is not enough, and I did I did it, y'all.
Speaker 2: I took that single save file, that one safe file,
Speaker 2: and I erased it and started over. And it was
Speaker 2: totally the right call because we discovering that game from
Speaker 2: the bottom. People talk about how well it said, it's
Speaker 2: set a good precedent, but it's kind of an empty world,
Speaker 2: and the emptiness is the point. That game is Zeldom
Speaker 2: mine Craft. It is a tranquil trip through a big,
Speaker 2: empty place with no noise, and I love it and
Speaker 2: it's even better than I remember. I'm going to stop
Speaker 2: talking for a second so other people can talk about
Speaker 2: how great Zelda is, and if anybody disagrees, then I'm
Speaker 2: going to drop off the call.
Speaker 1: Well, I think with Breath of the While, how you
Speaker 1: mentioned how it's kind of supposed to be empty, it's
Speaker 1: supposed to feel empty and open a little bit, and
Speaker 1: I love that as well, especially coming off like so
Speaker 1: many Ubisoft games, even something like Cyberpunk, where your map
Speaker 1: is just dotted with all these things. It's like here,
Speaker 1: go do this, go do that, Go do this, go
Speaker 1: do that, and you turn on Breath the While or
Speaker 1: even Read Dead to a lesser extent, and it's just like,
Speaker 1: oh no, the world itself is what's fun to explore.
Speaker 1: I'm not exploring the world because I'm going to a point.
Speaker 1: I'm exploring the world because I want to explore it.
Speaker 1: It's just that natural sense of exploration, which is which
Speaker 1: many people have talked about at length about how great
Speaker 1: it is. But I still it's still definitely the highlight
Speaker 1: of that game for me.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I was to bring up Cyberpunk as just the
Speaker 3: complete opposite, because I think the criticism that Breath of
Speaker 3: the Wilds world is empty is just well, it's not
Speaker 3: specific enough. And if I were if you submitted something
Speaker 3: to me, I would probably ask you some questions to
Speaker 3: help you tease out the real root of your issue,
Speaker 3: because I don't think more content means more better. I
Speaker 3: think that uh, you know, Cyberpunk really is is the
Speaker 3: perfect example of how superfluous, unnecessary activities dotting the world
Speaker 3: that have nothing to do with your character or your
Speaker 3: mission or anything can detract from the experience and can overwhelm.
Speaker 3: And I think, you know, Breath of the Wild, like,
Speaker 3: the world doesn't feel empty to me in the sense
Speaker 3: of that critique, because I was always just like one more,
Speaker 3: I'll just go one one more like to the next thing,
Speaker 3: and then like four hours later, you're still playing because
Speaker 3: you can just follow those those curiosity threads as far
Speaker 3: as you want to take them. Like god, what a
Speaker 3: what a pitch perfect example of how to make an
Speaker 3: open world that feels organic and allows you to actually
Speaker 3: use your creativity to explore instead of using just the
Speaker 3: prescribed tools given to you.
Speaker 4: Yeah, to go off what you said about like Cyberpunk comparison,
Speaker 4: like that that's a game that has great stuff in it,
Speaker 4: but like the world does such a terrible job leading
Speaker 4: you to it's good stuff, Like there were I beat
Speaker 4: it recently, and like there were there are a couple
Speaker 4: quests that like I'd heard people talk about that I
Speaker 4: like wanted to do, but like I just had never
Speaker 4: come across it, and I had to like look up
Speaker 4: a guide for it. And it's because that game just
Speaker 4: like doesn't know how to like lead you to that stuff.
Speaker 4: Where like you know, Breath of the Wild, it's like
Speaker 4: it has all these little like perfect landmarks that you
Speaker 4: see that You're like, that looks interesting and I'm going
Speaker 4: to go there, and I bet that has something cool
Speaker 4: in it, And sure enough, it's something awesome there. Like
Speaker 4: they know how to design that. I think there's a
Speaker 4: term for it. It's like weenies or something. Weenies.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it comes from theme parks. Theme parks are
Speaker 2: built with these visual cues to draw crowd certain directions.
Speaker 2: They call those visual cues weenies.
Speaker 4: That's what I.
Speaker 2: Yeah, as somebody mentioned Red DA two earlier, and I
Speaker 2: think Red To two and Breath of the Wild have
Speaker 2: several things in common, but one of the most prominent
Speaker 2: is that in Red Dead two, the West is a
Speaker 2: major character in that story. Arthur's a major character, you know,
Speaker 2: Dutch is a major character, and the world is a
Speaker 2: character in Red Dead two. Absolutely in Breath of the
Speaker 2: Wild just as much, maybe even more so. High Role
Speaker 2: is the main character of that game. That's who and
Speaker 2: what you're exploring, and that's what I love. Also, I
Speaker 2: had forgotten again how much that game is a bunch
Speaker 2: of Zelda fan boys that also were really into Minecraft
Speaker 2: and Portal like that. That that is who made that game,
Speaker 2: Zelda fan boys that love Minecraft and Portal. And I
Speaker 2: am all about that because that that down to like
Speaker 2: the blue and orange puzzle colors in the temples, and
Speaker 2: I'd forgotten all that, just the very or the piano
Speaker 2: music and the empty overworld. It it's it's so marvelously
Speaker 2: referential in the gentlest possible way. And then finally this week,
Speaker 2: and I just want to evangelize this one real quick.
Speaker 2: I have been playing Celeste too, which I'm not making up,
Speaker 2: that's real. Okay, So it's called Celeste Classic two Lonnie's Trek.
Speaker 2: Do y'all know that Celeste began life as a Pico
Speaker 2: eight game, the original Celeste John's hair Okay, John PIKEO eight.
Speaker 3: It sounds like I don't John Luke's the resident knowing
Speaker 3: about stuff like that person.
Speaker 1: Really what I'm saying there, But okay.
Speaker 2: So Piko eight is a fake video game console. It
Speaker 2: is a standard for game design that simulates a video
Speaker 2: game console that never existed. It has a fixed resolution,
Speaker 2: a limited color palette, a limited number of sound channels,
Speaker 2: and a memory limit on how big a game can be,
Speaker 2: just like an old like nys or game Boy would
Speaker 2: have had. And it uses standard programming languages and standard tools,
Speaker 2: and anybody that's willing to spend the time and learn
Speaker 2: the scripting can make a Pikeo eight game. Not whether
Speaker 2: they can make a good one, that's a whole other
Speaker 2: can of works. Pikeo eight games are eminently portable. You
Speaker 2: can put them into HTML five for example, so you
Speaker 2: can play it on your phone or in a web browser.
Speaker 2: Ce Less started life as a Pikeo weight game about
Speaker 2: a girl bouncing around a cave, and some of the
Speaker 2: original puzzle elements that make into the story driven Celeste
Speaker 2: come from that pike oweight game. The team built on
Speaker 2: that and built the incredible, incredible narrative slash gameplay loop
Speaker 2: that makes Celestia special later on, but it was the
Speaker 2: same team well a few weeks ago surprise release in
Speaker 2: three days, they built Celeste too on the same Pikeo
Speaker 2: eight engine, and so far it's Celeste with a grappling hook.
Speaker 2: That's awesome. It's very well designed, it's unfathomably hard, and
Speaker 2: it's absolutely free. Anybody can play it. Plug your Xbox
Speaker 2: controller into your PC, load up a web browser, go
Speaker 2: play it. Same team, same creators, new character named Lonnie
Speaker 2: who's the center of things, new kinds of puzzles, and
Speaker 2: I just just play this game. It's great.
Speaker 1: Do you think do you think this might be a
Speaker 1: hint at.
Speaker 2: Sic too.
Speaker 1: For fun?
Speaker 2: I mean, they made it in three days, you know,
Speaker 2: But it's the same team. And I suspect that, in
Speaker 2: addition to being gifted artists, musicians and game designers, the
Speaker 2: creators to Celest also like money. So I think there's
Speaker 2: a very good chance that's less two or require it
Speaker 2: that's Celest two is a thing that will happen. Because
Speaker 2: I don't know about you, but if I see Celest two,
Speaker 2: I'm buying it on three different platforms. And also I
Speaker 2: suspect they have more stories to tell the story of
Speaker 2: Celest already so extraordinarily powerful. Why not build on it
Speaker 2: if you have the opportunity.
Speaker 3: But you know, especially especially given the creator speaking about
Speaker 3: how it's a trans store, but at the time of writing,
Speaker 3: the team didn't think of it that way because it
Speaker 3: was just so I don't know if you all have
Speaker 3: read that piece that the Celest creator did, but gosh,
Speaker 3: I wish that I had, like any more information about
Speaker 3: that to share so people can find this piece. I'm
Speaker 3: googling it very quickly.
Speaker 1: We can put it in the description if I remember,
Speaker 1: so people can take a look at it while they're
Speaker 1: listening or after if they want a little bit more context.
Speaker 1: Just cut me off. When you found it though, and
Speaker 1: you want.
Speaker 3: To, I thought it so. Yeah, So the creator, Mattie Thorson,
Speaker 3: did a medium post and the I'm loading it up
Speaker 3: right now, and the headline for that is is Madeline
Speaker 3: canonically trans? And you can read that for more information
Speaker 3: about the process that Maddie went through, because there was
Speaker 3: you know, a lot of speculation of about it, a
Speaker 3: lot of like why you know, there's so many trans allegories,
Speaker 3: why isn't it more obviously trans? And well, Maddie talks
Speaker 3: about that and the piece, but I wonder, you know,
Speaker 3: that's that's something that could be explored further, you know,
Speaker 3: in a sequel, of course, I mean it's the same,
Speaker 3: you know, the same way that the Matrix has always
Speaker 3: been a trans allegory, but it wasn't obviously about Transnis
Speaker 3: at the time of release because the creators weren't out yet.
Speaker 3: So it's kind of to me, like that's how I
Speaker 3: interpreted as a very similar sort of thing, where it's
Speaker 3: just like something that's in your heart. So that's something
Speaker 3: I'm excited to see if there's going to be more Celeste,
Speaker 3: I would I would love to see how that has evolved,
Speaker 3: because it really isn't an evolution that we were able
Speaker 3: to witness through the game.
Speaker 4: I love the idea of a piece of work that
Speaker 4: maybe doesn't make sense fully to the creator at the time,
Speaker 4: but they're just putting like what they're feeling and what's
Speaker 4: in their heart like on it, and then it's not
Speaker 4: until like years later that you look back on it
Speaker 4: and you're like, that's why I did it that way,
Speaker 4: Like that's why I love the idea of something like that.
Speaker 4: Like that it adds so much, like I want to
Speaker 4: go back in play so less now because like like
Speaker 4: it completely changes your perspective on that game, and like
Speaker 4: that the creators weren't even aware of like it was
Speaker 4: just in their brain, you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's it makes the art not that art where
Speaker 3: you knew the intent fully is not pure. But there's
Speaker 3: just something very like there's something very beautiful about the
Speaker 3: process of the creation of art when you think about
Speaker 3: it as a form of self exploration, where like by
Speaker 3: even by the end of creating it, you haven't fully
Speaker 3: reached the final stage of that exploration. I mean, there's
Speaker 3: lots of things where that can happen. Like I recently
Speaker 3: got diagnosed with ADHD, and then I was looking back
Speaker 3: on my life and I was like, oh, so those
Speaker 3: are symptom Like oh, that that's not a character flaw
Speaker 3: or trait or failing that I have, Like that was
Speaker 3: just me having ADHD and not knowing, And like it's
Speaker 3: interesting to look back on things with a new lens
Speaker 3: over time.
Speaker 1: That does make me want to go back and play
Speaker 1: Celeste and honestly just whatever they have planned next, because
Speaker 1: even if it's not Celeste two, I'm sure whatever they
Speaker 1: do is going to be excellent. And I hope it
Speaker 1: has a grappling hook as well, because it sounds like
Speaker 1: that's a pretty cool addition.
Speaker 2: Well, this is like the most accessible thing in the world.
Speaker 2: I mean, you load up the map mixed games pikeoweight site,
Speaker 2: it loads it about three seconds and you're playing. So
Speaker 2: please try the Celeste Classic two because it's it's pretty
Speaker 2: darn dope. And the puzzles they've created around the grappling
Speaker 2: hook already, like in the seventy two hour game, I
Speaker 2: can't fathom what they've come up with in a full
Speaker 2: fledged product.
Speaker 1: I'm going to check it out. I have been playing
Speaker 1: Valheim and not even playing Valheim as well. Speaking of
Speaker 1: big open world games that are very peaceful, Valheim is
Speaker 1: definitely one of those. I have been having a pretty
Speaker 1: good time with it. I feel like so many people
Speaker 1: have talked so much about this game in a very
Speaker 1: short period of time because it kind of just took
Speaker 1: Steam and Twitter and the Internet and YouTube and whatnot
Speaker 1: by storm. But it is a very very good survival game.
Speaker 1: I think it trims down a lot of the fat
Speaker 1: that kind of held back some of the I don't
Speaker 1: want to say that not as good ones, but maybe
Speaker 1: the more intimidating survival game, something like Russ for example,
Speaker 1: which I talked about a couple weeks ago, that I
Speaker 1: had jumped in do and tried out. This feels so
Speaker 1: much maybe not better designed, but so much more approachable,
Speaker 1: And part of that is due to the fact that
Speaker 1: you're it's a more cooperative environment as opposed to a
Speaker 1: PvP environment, although you still can do PvP. I haven't
Speaker 1: done it yet because you don't want to do that
Speaker 1: or I don't want to do that. But I think
Speaker 1: one of my favorite things about it so far is
Speaker 1: that it's very good at setting goals for you, Like
Speaker 1: there are personal goals that you can set, like, oh,
Speaker 1: I want to go over here and build a giant
Speaker 1: Viking house because I think that would look cool on
Speaker 1: this hill. But there's also bosses that you need to destroy.
Speaker 1: There's certain areas of the map that they're not necessarily
Speaker 1: gate like level gated or anything, but there are certain
Speaker 1: areas of the map that are clearly more dangerous and
Speaker 1: if you head there without the proper equipment weapons, you
Speaker 1: will get your ass handed to you. So it kind
Speaker 1: of I don't know. I feel like it's one of
Speaker 1: the few survival games I've played since maybe The Forest,
Speaker 1: where there has been a conflict that I am trying
Speaker 1: to deal with that I didn't create myself. It's not like,
Speaker 1: oh I got to survive the rain or survive hunger
Speaker 1: or whatever, like simple things. It's like actual, somewhat story
Speaker 1: related obstacles that I need to a defeat. In that
Speaker 1: aspect of it, I really like. So I'm I'm having
Speaker 1: a good time with it. I'm excited to see what's next.
Speaker 1: Apparently there's some there's a lot I still haven't seen,
Speaker 1: which is also another reason why I like it, because
Speaker 1: I feel like a lot of the survival games you
Speaker 1: can kind of you run out of surprises a little
Speaker 1: sooner than you'd hope, Like you always think there might
Speaker 1: be something cool, and then you get there and it's like, Nope,
Speaker 1: it's just more forests that I can chop down. But
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm just one who liked likes those games anyway.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I think Valheim's very special and I'm excited
Speaker 1: to see what happens with it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean for me, it's like I like how
Speaker 4: it kind of strips away some maybe the frustrations that
Speaker 4: like like a rust is like that game is like brutal,
Speaker 4: you know, Like that game is like so hardcore. It's
Speaker 4: like the extreme other end where like you have a
Speaker 4: hunger meader in kind of in Valheim, but it's like
Speaker 4: it's just like there to kind of boost your stamina,
Speaker 4: Like they strip away a lot of like the survival
Speaker 4: mechanic elements where there's no stress around that, and then
Speaker 4: like the music is.
Speaker 1: Just so peaceful and the lighting is gorgeous.
Speaker 4: Lighting is gorgeous, and it's got this like Boca depth
Speaker 4: of field that like just when it hits right, you're like, oh, man,
Speaker 4: like so you just like it it. You kind of
Speaker 4: just have a good time just like wandering around and
Speaker 4: like enjoying yourself, and then you go into like the
Speaker 4: black Woods and it like gets all creepy and like
Speaker 4: the lighting changes, and yeah, I think that game just
Speaker 4: like has an atmosphere to it that other survival games
Speaker 4: don't quite have, with the exception of maybe the Forest.
Speaker 4: I think the Forest is like the closest because the
Speaker 4: Forest is probably the other only like survival game that
Speaker 4: I like truly liked. Most of them, I like kind
Speaker 4: of fall off pretty quickly, like this is another one
Speaker 4: where it gives me the same vibes as the Forest,
Speaker 4: although the Forest is actually very intense and stressful in
Speaker 4: the way.
Speaker 1: That this is not. They both just give the player
Speaker 1: objectives apart from just surviving, yes, which which I think
Speaker 1: is also much needed for me, Like I kind of
Speaker 1: need like a some sort of goal to keep me
Speaker 1: going Otherwise I just sort of lose steam with those
Speaker 1: kinds of games pretty quickly. I will say, the best thing,
Speaker 1: my favorite thing about Valheim, and this sounds really stupid,
Speaker 1: but I love it, is the fact that you can
Speaker 1: repair your equipment for free. You don't need wood to
Speaker 1: It's so nice to walk up and just hit a
Speaker 1: button and it's repaired. Like it sounds really stupid, but
Speaker 1: I cannot stand that when you have something about to
Speaker 1: break and then you go and it's like, no, you
Speaker 1: don't have the materials you need to fix it, and
Speaker 1: it's just like come on, please no.
Speaker 2: I mean the contemporary survival genre that we owe I
Speaker 2: guess most recently to Minecraft and Daisy is still I mean,
Speaker 2: we're just now reaching that level of maturity where we're
Speaker 2: looking at at the equivalent of like health pickups in
Speaker 2: an FBS versus regenerating health, Like quality of life is
Speaker 2: beginning to happen, and that's really really exciting. You're actually
Speaker 2: selling me on this. I have been thinking about getting
Speaker 2: into it. The one question I have for both of
Speaker 2: you is I don't I hate other humans in my
Speaker 2: survival games.
Speaker 1: You can play by yourself.
Speaker 2: Am I okay by myself? And okay, great soul, thank you.
Speaker 2: Other people stay out of my survival game. I don't
Speaker 2: mind you. Let me join my wilderness. Go away.
Speaker 1: I initially I was saying I probably wouldn't play Valheim
Speaker 1: by myself, but the more I think about it, I
Speaker 1: think I probably would. I don't know if i'd play
Speaker 1: it as much, but I still definitely would, just because
Speaker 1: it is a very relaxing and meditative game, like Breath
Speaker 1: of the Wild or Red Dead in that sense. And
Speaker 1: and it just it looks stunning, Like the design of it.
Speaker 1: The style of it just looks incredible, especially like early mornings,
Speaker 1: late at nights when you've got like the blues on
Speaker 1: one side and like the warm sun on the other,
Speaker 1: and the way they blend together and light just comes
Speaker 1: through the trees. It's it's great. And the music too
Speaker 1: in the fog, yeah, just very atmospheric. The world's also
Speaker 1: like absurdly absurdly massive, like I was exploring for We've
Speaker 1: been exploring for hours in our server, and I zoom
Speaker 1: out and it's just like a planet sized area to explore,
Speaker 1: and it's like, oh, there's there's a lot here to
Speaker 1: dig into.
Speaker 2: That sounds like a Jared Ask game. I need to.
Speaker 1: I think you'd like it even if you don't get hooked.
Speaker 1: I think you'd still enjoy it.
Speaker 2: For what it is. I like survival games, and I
Speaker 2: like chill games, and I like big open worlds. It
Speaker 2: sounds great.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I like it. Anyway, Let's move on to the
Speaker 1: big topic of the week. All right, and we are
Speaker 1: back with topics or should I say topic, because the
Speaker 1: Nintendo Direct just happened and that's all we're going to
Speaker 1: talk about. There was a lot to talk about. I
Speaker 1: think we're just gonna stick with the bigger announcements, so
Speaker 1: things that hadn't been announced previously, as well as some
Speaker 1: specific games that those of us here want to call out.
Speaker 1: But if there's no opposition, I can just go through
Speaker 1: these chronologically and we can say our piece on them.
Speaker 1: If there's anything we want to say at all, Yeah,
Speaker 1: go for it, sure, all right. First thing, Pirate from
Speaker 1: Zeno Blade Chronicles Too is coming to smash. Thank god,
Speaker 1: it's not Rex. That's all I have to say I love.
Speaker 4: That trailer because I was good trailer. I'm like, is
Speaker 4: this a like a DLC DLC like they already did one,
Speaker 4: like is this a Zeno Blade Chronicles too?
Speaker 3: Like what is this?
Speaker 4: And then it was just like, oh, it's oh, it's smashed.
Speaker 4: That was actually it got me.
Speaker 3: It was the most Oh go ahead, Jared.
Speaker 2: I'll just spinning around with the envelope and the seal
Speaker 2: that was adorable. That was really really really well done.
Speaker 3: Was that the most involved DLC trailer so far because
Speaker 3: they like had full voice, like like they've done special
Speaker 3: cutesy things before for the trailers, like you know, like
Speaker 3: Isabelle or whatever, but I felt like that was the
Speaker 3: most involved one they've done.
Speaker 4: They've gotten so creative, like the Joker one is still
Speaker 4: so good.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the Joker one, though, that came to out of
Speaker 1: left field though. I think that's why. But I think
Speaker 1: that's why this one was good too, is because I
Speaker 1: wasn't expecting a smash character reveal.
Speaker 4: I think the suffer Off one was like recreated like
Speaker 4: the whole fight scene from Advent Children, Oh yeah, which
Speaker 4: I've never seen, but people were very excited about that.
Speaker 4: So I was like that's cool.
Speaker 3: I have seen Advent Children. Never played a Final Fantasy game. Though.
Speaker 4: My old memory Advent Children is going into my local
Speaker 4: cyber cafe to play some games with a friend. H yeah, right,
Speaker 4: but a sentence, Oh I love it. And they had
Speaker 4: like it was like mostly PC's, but they had like
Speaker 4: a corner where they had like a TV and a
Speaker 4: couch and there were just a bunch of people watching
Speaker 4: Advent Children on that team. And I was like, all right,
Speaker 4: you guys, go, you know what have you seem like
Speaker 4: having a good time just watching Advent Children at the
Speaker 4: cyber cafe.
Speaker 1: I rented it at Blockbuster. I watched it. I don't
Speaker 1: remember it, but I to Blockbuster and picked that out
Speaker 1: for some reason, even though at the time I had
Speaker 1: also never played a final Fantasy game.
Speaker 2: It sure is a final fantasy film. I you know
Speaker 2: what it sure is. If you're gonna watch a final
Speaker 2: fantasy movie, I figure you should watch you should watch
Speaker 2: the one that Alec Baldwin is in. I mean that's
Speaker 2: where my mind is the what now, Yeah, the Spirits Within.
Speaker 2: I heard the theatrically released final Fantasy movie, The Spirits Within,
Speaker 2: starring Alec Square.
Speaker 1: I'm just picturing him with like Cloud's hair.
Speaker 2: I believe with a I don't remember unfortunately, the digital
Speaker 2: thespian's name, but they actually try to create a digital
Speaker 2: actor as well for that movie. If I remember right,
Speaker 2: someone that would appear in multiple features. I think it
Speaker 2: was at Aki Ross. Was was that the name? Am
Speaker 2: I remembering this right? Or am I getting mixed up? Now?
Speaker 2: I feel like I've stepped I could be mixing up
Speaker 2: ancient Sega Saturn more with this, but I think it
Speaker 2: was a Ross. I'm would have furiously google someone else.
Speaker 2: Please talk.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think my big hope with this character
Speaker 1: is that do something similar with Oh it is that?
Speaker 1: Is it?
Speaker 2: The character's name is doctor a Kei Ross. Indeed, yes,
Speaker 2: and I believe she was intended to appear in other movies.
Speaker 4: If I'm remembered, so, she was going to be like
Speaker 4: the sid of their movie Universe.
Speaker 2: I again, I feel like I'm overstepping my bounds here,
Speaker 2: but I think that this was the idea. Yes, I'm
Speaker 2: pretty sure that this is like a digital actor kind
Speaker 2: of thing. But yeah, go back and watch The Spirit
Speaker 2: Within because it's it's not good, but it's it's got
Speaker 2: some Really, it's about like space ghosts and guy in
Speaker 2: his gayism and it's cool. Yeah, not not coast to
Speaker 2: coast that would be oh my gosh. Hbo maxis all
Speaker 2: of space coast coast to coast, and I be happier.
Speaker 2: That's that's a whole other thing. We're talking about video
Speaker 2: games and Google achi Ross some more.
Speaker 1: I was gonna say that I hope they do something
Speaker 1: similar like they did with Sephroth, where you can unlock
Speaker 1: Pirate early if you beat it in a fight. I
Speaker 1: thought that was a really cool mechanic that I hope
Speaker 1: they do more of. But I guess canonically it probably
Speaker 1: doesn't work as well as seph Roth since he was
Speaker 1: a bad guy and he was like challenged me or whatever.
Speaker 3: But my favorite thing about this trailer was because it
Speaker 3: was at the very beginning. My role during these kinds
Speaker 3: of events is to do like editing after stories have
Speaker 3: been published, so I didn't have anything to do yet.
Speaker 3: So I was watching it and I get a text
Speaker 3: from Jake's Jake that's like surprised they didn't nerf the boobs,
Speaker 3: and I had the exact same thought, because they were
Speaker 3: really There's one part part of the reveal where they're
Speaker 3: kind of like right in your face. And I think
Speaker 3: it's interesting because Nintendo did a lot of butt nerfing,
Speaker 3: but apparently not boob nerfing. So I think we all
Speaker 3: know what that says about them. All I have to
Speaker 3: say about that.
Speaker 2: Achy Ross Updates found an old New York Times article
Speaker 2: where Tom Hanks is expressing his worry about how digital
Speaker 2: actors may This is from the year two thousand and one, remember,
Speaker 2: and Tom Hanks is a little worried about what the
Speaker 2: threat that digital actors have for conventional actors. Wow, this
Speaker 2: is just a thing to see. Okay, polar express.
Speaker 1: Character.
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, he was. Oh now we've got Robert
Speaker 2: Zimcha's talking about it here in the article. Okay, you
Speaker 2: know what, I need to be on a podcast and
Speaker 2: stop obsessing. There was a discussion that where like butts
Speaker 2: or something going on.
Speaker 3: A minute, I finished my thought. I just you know,
Speaker 3: it was just a little observation that I.
Speaker 1: Made Mario Golf Super Rush another Mario Golf game. How
Speaker 1: does that make y'all feel?
Speaker 4: I remember really being into a Mario Golf game on
Speaker 4: the Game Boy Advance. That's it. I played a Mario
Speaker 4: Golf game years ago.
Speaker 1: The Mario Golf Teams was pretty fun. I've played most
Speaker 1: of them, actually, and I'm oddly excited for this one.
Speaker 1: Not like I can't wait to play it, but it's
Speaker 1: definitely something I will be picking up because I feel
Speaker 1: like when Nintendo does these sports games, they're always good enough,
Speaker 1: but then they have that Nintendo charm that makes them
Speaker 1: more enjoyable. And that Golf Rush mode sounded kind of
Speaker 1: cool where you are playing golf with other people in
Speaker 1: real time instead of like taking turns, and I like
Speaker 1: the idea of it, you know, shooting your shot and
Speaker 1: then running as quickly as you can to the hole
Speaker 1: rather than cut two your character being already set up.
Speaker 1: That sounds kind of neat.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the four player chaos that that likely institute in
Speaker 2: the game, that alone, I think it's worth trouble. There's
Speaker 2: there's an old The Tory seventy eight hundred game called
Speaker 2: Ninja Golf. It was an exclusive on the platform, one
Speaker 2: of the only exclusives to ever come to that doomed console.
Speaker 2: Ninja Golf is a game where you're a ninja playing golf.
Speaker 2: You hit a ball in a classic like standard golf game,
Speaker 2: and then it turns into a side scrolling brawler where
Speaker 2: you fight your way through ninjas and monsters to the
Speaker 2: next like to where the ball is. Then you pop
Speaker 2: back and hit the ball towards the hole again and
Speaker 2: keep doing that. You get to the green where you
Speaker 2: fight a dragon, and then you put the ball in
Speaker 2: the hole. And I really like seeing this kind of playful,
Speaker 2: energetic four player take on golf where we're all rushing forward,
Speaker 2: no one's wasting time, but there's some blueeshell elements and
Speaker 2: waste the screw with the leader that'll make it fun.
Speaker 2: I cannot wait to play this. The Mario Golf games
Speaker 2: are consistently excellent all the way to back to like
Speaker 2: ANYS class or any s open way back in the
Speaker 2: day in the late eighties early nineties, but also Nintendo
Speaker 2: and Jeremy Parish just done some really interesting research around this.
Speaker 2: Nintendo's Golf is one of the most important golf video
Speaker 2: games ever, the one that goes way way back to
Speaker 2: the early eighties. They kind of invented that whole golf
Speaker 2: like hit meter thing we use. That was Nintendo's idea.
Speaker 2: They revolutionized golf video games and sort of created the
Speaker 2: standard that like thirty five years later was still using.
Speaker 2: So I have a feeling this is going to be
Speaker 2: a great video game and I can't wait to play it.
Speaker 2: I real life golf I couldn't care less about. But
Speaker 2: if Mario is involved and Nintendo's involved, I am in.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm excited. I played a lot of the three
Speaker 1: DS one, I played a lot of the GameCube one,
Speaker 1: Nintendo sixty four and whatnot? Was there one for the
Speaker 1: Nintendo sixty four? Orm I think Mario tennis.
Speaker 3: You just thinking you might be thinking Mario tennis. I
Speaker 3: have always been more.
Speaker 1: Think of tennis. Yeah, I don't think I played one
Speaker 1: on sixty four, but I played one on GameCube. I
Speaker 1: remember that for sure, and because that was the last
Speaker 1: console and they were talking about because the said the
Speaker 1: last one was like two thousand and three. But anyway,
Speaker 1: I'm excited for that. No More Heroes three, Jean Luke,
Speaker 1: I'm excited for that.
Speaker 4: I love No More Heroes. No More Heroes is so
Speaker 4: weird and out there. This they're finally making a third
Speaker 4: one after they did Travis strikes Back. I think it's
Speaker 4: what it's called. I can't remember. I always say it wrong,
Speaker 4: which was kind of like a weird in between like
Speaker 4: co Opy Arcadie style game. It was very it played
Speaker 4: very different. This is like proper No More Heroes. They're
Speaker 4: bringing back like the weird So in the first game,
Speaker 4: you would be like doing these assassin fights and you
Speaker 4: would have to like raise money, so you'd have to
Speaker 4: go like do like meaning like side jobs where you'd
Speaker 4: like most someone's lawn or like you know, do stuff
Speaker 4: like that to like earn money to go do the
Speaker 4: next fight. And they took that out of two and
Speaker 4: kind of streamlined it. But I actually really liked that stuff.
Speaker 4: I thought it like added a lot of charm to
Speaker 4: the game. So they seem to be me that stuff
Speaker 4: back will also just like ramping up the insanity of it.
Speaker 4: So I have a very soft spot in my heart
Speaker 4: for No More Heroes. So I'm very I'm very excited
Speaker 4: for that game.
Speaker 1: Jared, do you have any experience with the No More
Speaker 1: Heroes games?
Speaker 2: I do, and I'm a big fan of Grasshopper Manufacturer's
Speaker 2: kind of weird, wacky approach to game making. They can
Speaker 2: they can sometimes have some truly bizarre conclusions, but I
Speaker 2: do wish that they're generally speaking, trying something new, and
Speaker 2: I think the number of Heroes games are solid, I think,
Speaker 2: especially two, which irons out a lot of the issues
Speaker 2: with one, and so I think that this could be
Speaker 2: a third times the charm situation. I'm actually really, really
Speaker 2: really looking forward to it. It's a it's a mature series,
Speaker 2: not in the rated M for mature way, but in
Speaker 2: that this has been worked on and refined and gone
Speaker 2: back to again and again. It doesn't take itself seriously.
Speaker 2: It's about lightsaber fighting. It's hard to go wrong with that.
Speaker 4: It's also rated M in the mature way as well. Yeah, yeah, no,
Speaker 4: I agree. I I like mechanically like I think two
Speaker 4: is great, although I I like the story aspects of
Speaker 4: of one more and I think you Suda wasn't as
Speaker 4: involved in two. But like, if you haven't played that,
Speaker 4: the Travis strikes Back, it's a I don't want to
Speaker 4: call it a great game, but it's like a it's
Speaker 4: a weird, weird game that's like this basically like an
Speaker 4: allegory for like Suda's career, and it's like like the
Speaker 4: whole thing is like Travis is like wrestling with the
Speaker 4: idea if he wants to go back and like be
Speaker 4: an assassin again. And it's like clearly like a stand
Speaker 4: in for like Suda, like if he wants to actually
Speaker 4: make it No More Heroes three, it's such a weird,
Speaker 4: weird thing as like a like an art piece almost
Speaker 4: and and and I want I want to see more
Speaker 4: of that bizarre energy brought in the into No More
Speaker 4: Heroes three. So I'll I don't like every suit of game,
Speaker 4: but I'll always try. I always try to suit a game.
Speaker 2: That's where I fall. I got to spend almost an
Speaker 2: hour interview Anym once and one of the takeaways from
Speaker 2: that we spent almost the entire time, it turned out
Speaker 2: talking about his company band and about Fire and progress
Speaker 2: like those were the two times. Yeah, like most of
Speaker 2: the time, like he wrote one of the Fire pro
Speaker 2: games back in the day. And yeah, he's any but
Speaker 2: you get the impression from a lot of his games
Speaker 2: that he's going to be this just complete up his
Speaker 2: own button narcissist. He's just the most like laid back dude.
Speaker 2: And I really do appreciate that he makes these kind
Speaker 2: of mid level, mid tier art piece video games that
Speaker 2: are what he wants them to be and hit or miss.
Speaker 2: The industry needs that and needs people like him. So
Speaker 2: I really like this games coming out. I can't wait
Speaker 2: to play it.
Speaker 1: Next we have probably the winner for the worst title
Speaker 1: I've seen in a long time, Project Triangle Strategy.
Speaker 4: What are you talking about? That's a great name. I
Speaker 4: hope they don't change it. They shouldn't title. They should
Speaker 4: go with that.
Speaker 1: You know what they're gonna do, because they did this
Speaker 1: with Octopath Traveler. It was called Project Octopath Traveler and
Speaker 1: then they dropped the project and called it Octopath Traveler.
Speaker 1: So they're going to drop the project. It's called Triangle Strategy,
Speaker 1: which I don't know if that's an improvement at all.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 1: That being said, though, I'm excited for this game. I
Speaker 1: had a chance to play a little bit of the
Speaker 1: demo before we started recording, but I have a lot
Speaker 1: of time, so I didn't get to see much. But
Speaker 1: what I saw was really cool, Like it seems like
Speaker 1: Final Fantasy Tactics. But with that, with what with the
Speaker 1: style that Squannix has been doing for these Nintendo Switch
Speaker 1: games like Octopath Traveler or, to a lesser extent, Bravely Default,
Speaker 1: which comes out later in the month. You guys excited
Speaker 1: for that one.
Speaker 3: It's a real Jake game.
Speaker 4: It's real Peter Brown sounding games.
Speaker 1: I want to know what Peter Brown thinks of it.
Speaker 4: I want to know that too. I never played it
Speaker 4: Octopath Traveler, but I I have been meaning to try
Speaker 4: it because it seems like a game I would I
Speaker 4: would quite like. And I've also never played Final Fantasy Tactics,
Speaker 4: and that's also a game I've been meaning to play.
Speaker 4: So maybe I'll play this and then go play Tactics
Speaker 4: or play Tactics in this I should just try. I
Speaker 4: should try one of these games at some point, because
Speaker 4: they seem like they'd be up my alley.
Speaker 2: Yeah, don't don't wait, don't sit on Tactics. Go find
Speaker 2: a Go find Worth Alliance which has the better translation,
Speaker 2: and play it. It's it's really worth your time. People
Speaker 2: love to say this is the Game of Thrones of
Speaker 2: video games, or the Game of Thrones or this, but
Speaker 2: like Final Fantasy Tactics actually is game of Thrones. It
Speaker 2: really is, like long before that those scripts were written.
Speaker 2: It's just this machiabellion. Every hour someone's betraying, somebody betraying
Speaker 2: somebody thing. And but it's also a superbly implemented combination
Speaker 2: of a good tactics game where your decisions really matter,
Speaker 2: and a great job system game where you can have
Speaker 2: a lot of fun twing your characters and breaking the
Speaker 2: game in interesting ways. Tactic teams are kind of a
Speaker 2: rare and precious subgenre. We get x Calm, we get
Speaker 2: Final Fantasy Tactics with the incredible Tactics Ocre Let Us
Speaker 2: Clean Together, which I don't think got nearly the love
Speaker 2: it deserved, and it's probably still the best tactics game
Speaker 2: ever made that came out only about five years ago.
Speaker 2: I think I really want to play this. Square has
Speaker 2: more hits than this is in the tactic space, So
Speaker 2: pretty excited about it and these games. The thing about
Speaker 2: tactics teams that I think people miss is they are
Speaker 2: way more accessible usually than they seem. They look complicated
Speaker 2: and dull and hard to get into. But you'll have
Speaker 2: played fire Emplum, right, I mean, yeah, that's what this is.
Speaker 2: It's fire Emblum's just growing out of that same stream.
Speaker 2: Oh jeez, my brain went dead.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 3: I mean you sold me on the concept because I
Speaker 3: actually I think I was editing something when this went up.
Speaker 3: Why I didn't really see the trailer. But I do
Speaker 3: really like tactics games. I'm kind of like newer to
Speaker 3: that genre. But I'll I don't know, I want to
Speaker 3: look for like like I'm looking for new ones, but
Speaker 3: I'll probably play fine Fantasy Tactics first.
Speaker 2: Have you played Into the Breach? That was what I
Speaker 2: was trying to.
Speaker 3: Oh, Into the Breach is so good?
Speaker 1: There is excellent. Yeah, that was almost that was That
Speaker 1: was one of our top games whenever that came out.
Speaker 1: But it was very good.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, I can't recommend enough. If you can get
Speaker 2: your hands on an old Vita, go dig up Tactics
Speaker 2: over let Us Clean Together, which is the final Fantasy
Speaker 2: Tactics team getting the band back together like fifteen years
Speaker 2: later and making a new game, and it's Final Fantasy
Speaker 2: Tactics too, and it's better in every way. It's it's incredible.
Speaker 3: I do have a Vita.
Speaker 2: There you go. Tactics over all?
Speaker 1: Right? Uh Neon White, Jared, you added this one? You
Speaker 1: you want to to talk about it? It looks pretty cool.
Speaker 1: Based on the trailer, it looked like a very fast
Speaker 1: paced first person shooter with a unique style.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was excited about this. You know, you've got
Speaker 2: people like, Hey, I'm doing heavenly stuff. We're up here
Speaker 2: in the heavens being an assassin, so that's just video
Speaker 2: game stuff whatever. But the card thing looked neat. But
Speaker 2: then I happened to see a name as it was
Speaker 2: flashing the end, and that changed my entire opinion. That
Speaker 2: name was Ben Esposito. Yeah, that's right, this is a
Speaker 2: ben Esposito game.
Speaker 3: I had no idea I missed that. I missed that part.
Speaker 3: This is the first I'm hearing of that.
Speaker 1: Now I'm si the.
Speaker 2: Guy ad Donut County. This is dude that was on
Speaker 2: Edith Finch. This is I mean, just like, I am
Speaker 2: in this. Dude can do no wrong up to this
Speaker 2: point and when it comes to video games, so does
Speaker 2: not miss Yeah, please continue O jump in, tell tell
Speaker 2: them all.
Speaker 3: About Oh I'm really excited because I completely missed that
Speaker 3: it was benice Posito. But I love Edith Finch. I
Speaker 3: think Donut County is freaking cute. I love that raccoon.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 3: I think it's interesting that you know his oubra if
Speaker 3: you will, includes both a very just like just humor
Speaker 3: focused kind of game and then Edith Finch. So yeah,
Speaker 3: now I'm like, now I'm in on this one. Thanks
Speaker 3: for adding it, because I absolutely I was. I was
Speaker 3: in the middle of editing something else and I did.
Speaker 3: I would not have found that information again. Probably it
Speaker 3: would have been lost in the news ether.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was really lucky. It just jumped. I was
Speaker 2: just like, I was looking to see who made this
Speaker 2: because I thought it was an interesting idea. I was like,
Speaker 2: that's been this, and I went back and actually scrubbed
Speaker 2: through that. I was like, yep, holy crap. So I
Speaker 2: was like, yay, So yeah, I think there's a better
Speaker 2: better chance than not this is going to be a
Speaker 2: pretty good video game.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it definitely looks interesting. I'm excited for that one
Speaker 1: as well. And then you also added the Famicom Detective Club.
Speaker 2: Okay, fancy.
Speaker 1: That. Oh.
Speaker 3: I was so excited. Multiple people messaged me and they
Speaker 3: were like, you pumped. I had a moment where I
Speaker 3: was watching the trailer and I was like, is this
Speaker 3: the murder mystery series that was riffed upon in Dongan
Speaker 3: Rapa two? That is Twilight Syndrome. I was incorrect, but
Speaker 3: I'm still very excited because I think that era is
Speaker 3: really interesting. I think that the way that it has
Speaker 3: been recreated, like in the art style, like all of
Speaker 3: that looks really great. I'm just I'm here for it.
Speaker 3: I'm so here for it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm really excited for it too. That Yujikri is
Speaker 2: you know, we've heard of him from Dragon Quest, but
Speaker 2: he's an even bigger deal in Japan than he is hearing, Like,
Speaker 2: he's the kind of person you see him on television,
Speaker 2: you know who he is there, like everybody recognizes him.
Speaker 2: And dragon Quest music is in like talk shows, well
Speaker 2: at least once a week if you're watching some channel
Speaker 2: in Japan, you're gonna hear dragon Quest music in the background.
Speaker 2: But he's responsible not just for console ARPGs as we
Speaker 2: understand them today. He also made before dragon was again
Speaker 2: called the Portopia Serial Murder Project or Portopia, which is
Speaker 2: kind of the og visual novel that created this whole
Speaker 2: uh the dating zim visual novel genre, or the Dengan
Speaker 2: rampas and all this that we understand today. In Japan,
Speaker 2: it was a bigger deal. It's becoming morewin right now.
Speaker 2: But we wouldn't have things like how to Foot Boyfriend
Speaker 2: if it weren't for youg Hori, and we wouldn't. And
Speaker 2: Famicom Detective c Love is Nintendo's early riff on the
Speaker 2: Portopia idea to give you an idea how important this
Speaker 2: is for storytelling. You'll find Portopia references hidden in Metal
Speaker 2: Gear games because Kojin is just crazy about it, and
Speaker 2: it deeply influences the way he thinks about storytelling, this deep,
Speaker 2: deep story where your investigation helps make the world more
Speaker 2: clear around you through a series of what Horry thought
Speaker 2: about as interacting with the computer at a time, you know,
Speaker 2: having a conversation with a computer at a time when
Speaker 2: that didn't seem possible. He simulated that effect. The Famicom
Speaker 2: games tie into that. You know that there are fan
Speaker 2: translations at least of a Famicom Detective Club to the
Speaker 2: Sneesport that came later, and that's fine, but now they're accessible.
Speaker 2: And this is wonderful little slice of history that shows
Speaker 2: for so many of the games that we left today.
Speaker 2: If you've ever dated anybody in any dream daddy, if
Speaker 2: you've ever gone out with a pigeon in a video game,
Speaker 2: this is where it all kind of began. So that's
Speaker 2: why I'm excited about it. There's my rant about Factor Club.
Speaker 3: See, you are so much more knowledgeable than I I was,
Speaker 3: just like, well, murder, I love it. Let's go and
Speaker 3: you were like, oh, it has this long history and
Speaker 3: it's actually a valuable thing to play.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this gives us some insight into it. I've tried
Speaker 2: to stumble through uh Famicom Detective Club in Japanese, and
Speaker 2: my Japanese is just not good enough. But in Japan
Speaker 2: these have a nostalgia to them. If you play at
Speaker 2: the games Center, do you know that game Center X games?
Speaker 2: So there are these. Okay, so Jared goes on a
Speaker 2: tangent jake shooting me down if I'm killing it. No, no, no,
Speaker 2: we love it all right, So the game there's two
Speaker 2: of them, the Game Center c X games, or there's
Speaker 2: three now technically, but we're not going to count. The
Speaker 2: third came back. They are these video games. One came
Speaker 2: out in America about being a kid in Japan in
Speaker 2: the early nineteen eighties and every month you've got you've
Speaker 2: got a Famicom or something like a Famicom, and every
Speaker 2: month you get a video game magazine in the mail,
Speaker 2: and every now and then your mom and dad buy
Speaker 2: you a new video game, and you're playing these mini
Speaker 2: games that are evocative of Japanese classic video games, the
Speaker 2: same ones we grew up playing. But they're polished and
Speaker 2: refined for modern sensibilities, and they're full of secrets, and
Speaker 2: the virtual game magazines you get in the mail have
Speaker 2: like secrets you can look up like old Nintendo powers,
Speaker 2: the unlock new things and find hidden games, and it's
Speaker 2: this wonderful kind of combination of storytelling game and a
Speaker 2: retro throwback and a bunch of good mini games. The
Speaker 2: second one of those, which never came to America, is
Speaker 2: full of these Famicom to Detective Club games, like parodies
Speaker 2: of them, And we never got that in America because
Speaker 2: we don't have that nostalgia. But for millions of former
Speaker 2: Japanese kids the same age as as the people who
Speaker 2: are playing those, this is every bit as wonderful as
Speaker 2: getting a new Super Mario game. That's another thing I
Speaker 2: think is cool if we're getting to touch in other
Speaker 2: culture's like special cultural experience, to get even more of
Speaker 2: an understanding of what video games mean to a country
Speaker 2: that's had so much to do with how we enjoy
Speaker 2: them here in America today. Okay, that was a long time.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, absolutely, Kelly, the's next tour for you.
Speaker 3: Alrighty, let's go. So the first one is World's End Club.
Speaker 3: That's an interesting one. I have it on iOS, but
Speaker 3: the entire game is not on iOS, but it's by
Speaker 3: the Duncan Robe creator and the Unfortunately, I think the
Speaker 3: direct actually did kind of spoil the early game twist.
Speaker 3: If you've played Donkan Rampa, which you know now that
Speaker 3: the direct. If you've you're listening to this and you've
Speaker 3: seen the direct, oh, well, like it's not that big
Speaker 3: a deal. But I was like, oh, I thought it
Speaker 3: was interesting when I was playing, because you start out,
Speaker 3: and they showed this in the direct. You start out
Speaker 3: doing this a similar murder game that you'll see in
Speaker 3: Donkan Rampa where you're like trapped underwater and you have
Speaker 3: to do this killing game thing. But then the killing
Speaker 3: game is ended prematurely and you go up to the
Speaker 3: surface in Japan and discover that everything's weird. The controls
Speaker 3: kind of stop me from playing it, uh too much
Speaker 3: after that point, because I was just playing on my
Speaker 3: phone and that wasn't really working great for me. So
Speaker 3: I'm I'm excited to give it another shot on Switch
Speaker 3: because I think it'll be a little bit easier. There's
Speaker 3: some kind of like combat esque sequences that just weren't
Speaker 3: working for me with a touchscreen, but I I want
Speaker 3: to experience more because I think Uh Coustaka Kodaka, who's
Speaker 3: the creator Donan Rampa Go, always got a trick up
Speaker 3: his sleeve really, like when I interviewed him a couple
Speaker 3: of years ago, like he I asked him like he
Speaker 3: basically said that he makes games that he would want
Speaker 3: to play, and I kind of asked him why, and
Speaker 3: he like, so, what do you think of the people
Speaker 3: who like them? Because he was describing himself as like weird.
Speaker 3: He's like, I'm weird and I make games that I
Speaker 3: like to play. And I was like, what do you
Speaker 3: think of all the fans, Like where you expecting them?
Speaker 3: And he was like, I don't consider them fans. I
Speaker 3: consider them knock him up. And I was like, hell yeah,
Speaker 3: and I know what knackama means. And I think the
Speaker 3: translator uh just said like friends, and I was like, no,
Speaker 3: kindred spirits, comrades in arms. It is deeper than that.
Speaker 3: So I want to give it another shot because I
Speaker 3: have faith that.
Speaker 4: There's more to it.
Speaker 1: It was.
Speaker 3: It didn't quite work for me on Iowa. I'm excited
Speaker 3: to try it on Switch and.
Speaker 1: Then Animal Crossing Keli and then.
Speaker 3: Animal Crossing, which I will call you out right now,
Speaker 3: was not on the list until the middle of this podcast,
Speaker 3: so I forget what order it actually came in in
Speaker 3: the presentation. But obviously we were expecting the Mario stuff
Speaker 3: to happen, like that has been announced for months, and I,
Speaker 3: you know, I knew that there would be certain you
Speaker 3: know items like the question block and the you know,
Speaker 3: the mushroom and the shell because the Mario furniture series
Speaker 3: has been an animal crossing since the beginning. But what
Speaker 3: I was not ready for was fast travel via warp pipe.
Speaker 3: That absolutely fucked me up.
Speaker 1: I was like, I have stuff to do, but I.
Speaker 3: Am not going to do it for a second because
Speaker 3: I was not ready for that. So that's fascinating, Like
Speaker 3: that is the kind of mechanic, like an addition of
Speaker 3: a mechanic that I was not expecting from this update.
Speaker 3: It's not you know, it's not it's no brewster, it's
Speaker 3: no museum upgrade. But that's wild. I here, I am
Speaker 3: over here, like I wish they'd let me put rugs outside,
Speaker 3: and then they're like, warp pipe go in it. So
Speaker 3: that was really exciting, and I think one of the
Speaker 3: interesting things, actually all two of the interesting things is
Speaker 3: in that trailer, they basically showed the entire list of items,
Speaker 3: which I then transcribed and put in an article for
Speaker 3: you all to enjoy on Gaizauco.
Speaker 1: But it.
Speaker 3: It basically, I think, shows every item that's it seemed
Speaker 3: like a pretty comprehensive list. In Nook Shopping, which is
Speaker 3: the shopping app in the game. There are a couple
Speaker 3: items from previous games that weren't included in that list.
Speaker 3: So the fire bar is a notable one that was
Speaker 3: in previous animal crossing games and the like bullet bill cannon,
Speaker 3: but there were some new ones as well, So that
Speaker 3: was that. And and then also I think something that
Speaker 3: I was pretty excited about as someone who's been frustrated
Speaker 3: with the limited time events in the game, I think
Speaker 3: it's kind of hard if you are not going to
Speaker 3: be playing for eight hours a day like I did
Speaker 3: for the festival event to write the festival guide that
Speaker 3: nobody read. I I if you're not going to spend
Speaker 3: that much time in the event, you're you're probably going
Speaker 3: to miss some limited time items and that has been
Speaker 3: a problem, especially for people with the like the mushroom
Speaker 3: set that was kind of hard to get, or some
Speaker 3: of the holiday items. This Mario set actually does not
Speaker 3: seem to be time locked or time limited time because
Speaker 3: my thinking on this is in the trailer they show
Speaker 3: that it is part of the promotion section of nick
Speaker 3: Shopping that is different than the event section. So you'll
Speaker 3: find like the Lunar New Year stuff, the Valentine's Day stuff,
Speaker 3: all of that's in a special like seasonal section of
Speaker 3: Kook Shopping. The promotion section is different. That's where you
Speaker 3: can find like the Pocket Camp crossover items. And because
Speaker 3: I've unlocked those items, they're just permanently there for me
Speaker 3: to buy whenever I want. And so I think that's
Speaker 3: how these Mario items work, which is such a big
Speaker 3: improvement on previous games, where like originally way back when
Speaker 3: you would have to like get like it was an
Speaker 3: actual special promotion, back when Nintendo would like make you
Speaker 3: go to a place and like in Newly, if you
Speaker 3: had to it was random, you would buy a fortune
Speaker 3: cookie and whatever number you get, you would get that item.
Speaker 3: Now now you can just buy whatever one you want
Speaker 3: from the looks of it, So that's an improvement because
Speaker 3: I would not want to have to stand at nooks
Speaker 3: Cranny buying a thousand fortune cookies, trying to get specifically
Speaker 3: peaches crown you know. So, And that's the other thing.
Speaker 3: They added a lot of outfits which were not in
Speaker 3: the previous Mario furniture series, and sound effects.
Speaker 1: Too, and you put on Mario's it makes like a
Speaker 1: Mario sound effect or whatever.
Speaker 3: A lot of cute details, like especially one of the
Speaker 3: interesting things I think is the thwomp because it floats
Speaker 3: in the air, which there's no other New Horizons item
Speaker 3: that does this. One thing that's you I can't tell
Speaker 3: from the trailer is if you can just walk directly
Speaker 3: under it. Obviously it's the thwomp, so it comes down,
Speaker 3: but like does that take up an entire like square
Speaker 3: of space? Like how does that work? So some interesting
Speaker 3: things there that I would probably dive into when I
Speaker 3: have access to them. Yeah, really, I I the warp
Speaker 3: pipe thing, I could not believe that. Just go ahead,
Speaker 3: just go ahead, click on it. You'll enter it because
Speaker 3: the physics doesn't matter, and then you'll appear at the
Speaker 3: on the other side, and the game already has fast travel.
Speaker 3: You can call Rosetti. This is why it is so
Speaker 3: wild to.
Speaker 2: Me watching your like unmitigated excitement and joy at this
Speaker 2: is a pretty fantastic experience. I'm very, very very happy
Speaker 2: to witness this gallery.
Speaker 3: Thanks so Glass not annoying, not lily, not at all.
Speaker 1: Two more things, the Big Ones Skywards Sword coming to
Speaker 1: Nintendo Switch those two ways you can play it. You
Speaker 1: can play with a using motion controls with your joy cons,
Speaker 1: or you can use the control stick in order to
Speaker 1: direct your sword. It's coming out what they say June
Speaker 1: twenty something.
Speaker 2: I love how they troll this. If you don't mind
Speaker 2: me interrupting for a moment, Oh yeah, the controls starting
Speaker 2: with and you can play it with both joy cons. Now,
Speaker 2: there have been calls for years to play this without
Speaker 2: motion controls from many fans. So him going through a
Speaker 2: long detailed thing on that and then or if that
Speaker 2: was absolutely brilliant and very very funny.
Speaker 1: It was right after the troll where Numa was like,
Speaker 1: I know you want me to talk about beat of
Speaker 1: the While too, but I won't be doing that.
Speaker 3: Oh my god. That was the thing is like, I
Speaker 3: feel like to an American, that's just a troll. But
Speaker 3: I think that was just like a nice courtesy, you know,
Speaker 3: I appreciate it like.
Speaker 1: Although I wish they'd do something with Metroid uh at
Speaker 1: some point, because boy, that's been a while.
Speaker 2: I imagine I'm only speculating here, but I actually have
Speaker 2: a lot of sympathy for the position ran. I would
Speaker 2: be shocked if COVID hasn't thrown production schedules just completely
Speaker 2: off the rails for them for years. And Nintendo's making
Speaker 2: money hand over fist right now. They're selling video games
Speaker 2: by by the bushel. They would be selling even more
Speaker 2: video games if they had them. They know that. I
Speaker 2: think they planned to have them. They're just doing their
Speaker 2: best in a really difficult situation. That's not their fault,
Speaker 2: is my guess about what's happening with the supply at
Speaker 2: the moment. And so I really actually appreciated him coming
Speaker 2: out there and just being like, here's the elephant in
Speaker 2: the room. Yaw, you're gonna hear something later, but I'm
Speaker 2: just not ready to talk about it. But yeah, I
Speaker 2: suspect Primes in the same boat. I mean, they came
Speaker 2: out and told us we're restarting this. You'll hear from
Speaker 2: us when it's ready. I appreciated that a couple of
Speaker 2: years ago, and you know, we'll get it. We're going
Speaker 2: to get there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's what I mean by saying like, I think
Speaker 3: to an American audience, that's more of like a a haha,
Speaker 3: fuck you kind of like move. I think like if
Speaker 3: an American developer did that, it would be like a troll.
Speaker 3: But I think coming from a Japanese dev and especially Nintendo,
Speaker 3: it really is just like a please understand moment, which
Speaker 3: I know people were upset by, but I was glad
Speaker 3: it was followed up by Skywards or The release date
Speaker 3: is July sixteenth, by the way, and I am very
Speaker 3: I just really want to say this before I forget.
Speaker 3: Really good on them for making it slightly more accessible
Speaker 3: control wise. I think obviously they kind of had to
Speaker 3: do that with the release of the switch Light because
Speaker 3: it would have been unplayable for everybody who owns one
Speaker 3: of those. But also, you know, just having the option
Speaker 3: to not use most motion controls has been a sticking
Speaker 3: point with Nintendo in the past, and I think that
Speaker 3: making it even slightly more accessible. Obviously Nintendo has a
Speaker 3: ways to go when it comes to accessibility in the
Speaker 3: way that like Microsoft does it, but I think, you know,
Speaker 3: that's pretty important. I've never played Skyward Swords, so I'm
Speaker 3: really excited to play it.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I actually haven't played Skyward Sword either. It's one
Speaker 1: of the few three D Zelda games, I mean just
Speaker 1: Zelda games in general that I have. I have not
Speaker 1: not even started it, so I'm excited to play it
Speaker 1: in that sense. Have you guys played Skyward Sort Are
Speaker 1: you excited for it or are you hoping for something else.
Speaker 1: I know a lot of people were banking on a
Speaker 1: Zelda collection, which sounded too good to be true.
Speaker 3: At the time.
Speaker 4: I'm I've played it before. I enjoyed it. I have
Speaker 4: got problems with it. I think the pacing of that
Speaker 4: game is a little not great at time, especially in
Speaker 4: the early hours.
Speaker 3: But wow, Zelda game with early pacing issues.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but like time's like ten, Like it's really bad.
Speaker 4: I can't defend that part of the game at all,
Speaker 4: other than the fact that the story stuff's actually kind
Speaker 4: of good. It's I thought it was interesting that like
Speaker 4: he was trying to be like, Hey, a lot of
Speaker 4: the Breath of the Wild mechanics started in this game.
Speaker 4: So if you like that game, give it a try,
Speaker 4: because it's a very different game. It is like super
Speaker 4: like traditional Zelda in a lot of ways. It's it's
Speaker 4: very cut scene heavy, very story heavy. I think that
Speaker 4: stuff probably will grate on a lot of people because
Speaker 4: because it takes a while for the game to really
Speaker 4: get going. That said, I do think that game has
Speaker 4: some like the best dungeon design in Zelda. Like, it's
Speaker 4: got some really good dungeons if you're someone who cares
Speaker 4: about like the Zelda lore, It's got a lot of
Speaker 4: really good Like it's basically like supposed to be like
Speaker 4: the first game in this Zelda timeline, so it kind
Speaker 4: of like explains a lot of the setup for Zelda,
Speaker 4: and like, I think people who care about that stuff
Speaker 4: will really like that part about it. It's it's also
Speaker 4: got a really good I really like its version of
Speaker 4: Zelda because she's like the Link's childhood friend in this one,
Speaker 4: so you get a lot of build up with her,
Speaker 4: and I think like they do a really good job
Speaker 4: like establishing her more as a character in a way
Speaker 4: that other Zeldas don't, even if it does eventually fall
Speaker 4: into the traditional like okay, I gotta go save her now.
Speaker 4: It's also got Groose, who's the best Zelda character I
Speaker 4: want to hear. Otherwise gross Groose is fantastic.
Speaker 2: Come fight me if you disagree, have something to say
Speaker 2: about that.
Speaker 1: I feel like.
Speaker 4: Tingle and Groose would would get along really well or something.
Speaker 3: Yeah they are. There are two p's, aren't they. The
Speaker 3: only thing I know about Grouse is a Zelda a
Speaker 3: remix called Started from the Groose Now He's Loose, and
Speaker 3: it is ri started from the Pot and our here.
Speaker 3: I googled a Skyrits Sword because I couldn't remember exactly
Speaker 3: when it came out. And I know the reason I
Speaker 3: never played it is because I had just begun college
Speaker 3: and so I didn't have a WI in my dorm.
Speaker 4: Imagine like a Jersey Shore character just showing up in
Speaker 4: like a Zelda game, like okay, So he's like a
Speaker 4: Naughts high school bully. He's He's great.
Speaker 1: I love him.
Speaker 2: Canonically, the greatest Zelda character is the guy from Zelda Too,
Speaker 2: whose name is Error. So you can walk into a
Speaker 2: room and he says, I am Error. And when when
Speaker 2: you're twelve and you've just bought Zelda Too, you're very confused,
Speaker 2: let me tell you what I got a busted copy.
Speaker 2: And then later on a guy send you back to
Speaker 2: go find Error turns offer. It was supposed to erin
Speaker 2: and yeah, it just got translated into the game. But yeah,
Speaker 2: Skyward's Sword is interesting. I'm glad they're doing it. It
Speaker 2: deserves to stay in the sun. It came out at
Speaker 2: a very weird time in the Wiz life cycle, when
Speaker 2: a lot of good stuff, frankly there came along at
Speaker 2: the kind of the end, the tail end was getting
Speaker 2: ignored or overshadowed. And I'm glad it's getting its day.
Speaker 2: A Twilight Princess for Weizelda's that's definitely when I prefer,
Speaker 2: and I'd like to get it off with you and
Speaker 2: on to switch. I really hope that happens because I
Speaker 2: think that is I mean again, you talk about slow starts,
Speaker 2: good lord, but ye at all. Yeah, but that's so
Speaker 2: that's two hours of slow start Zelda and then seventy
Speaker 2: eight hours of the best Zelda that's not called Twilight
Speaker 2: Princess or a pardon me, that's not called Breath of
Speaker 2: the Wall. I love that game. But I hope it
Speaker 2: gets unlocked, and I'm glad to see Skyward sort get
Speaker 2: its day. Yeah really, yeah, I'm Joan. Look, I'm glad
Speaker 2: you're excited about it. Yeah.
Speaker 4: The only thing that disappoints me is the price. It's
Speaker 4: sixty dollars, which I feel is is pretty steep for
Speaker 4: a ten year old game. I know they're adding and
Speaker 4: they're changing stuff, and I don't want to like say
Speaker 4: like it's easy. You just put it on the switch
Speaker 4: and it's done. Like I know they have to do
Speaker 4: work for it. But the you know Twilight Princess HD,
Speaker 4: that was fifty dollars, the winmaker is fifty dollars. Seeing
Speaker 4: it be sixty dollars for what I think kind of
Speaker 4: in the in the overall opinion is one of the
Speaker 4: more mixed is all the games. I think it's a
Speaker 4: little weird. I think that's a bit of a hard sell,
Speaker 4: especially because I do think it is a game worth playing,
Speaker 4: but sixty dollars is maybe it's maybe a little much.
Speaker 2: So okay, I after hearing that show a hands who's
Speaker 2: gonna buy it?
Speaker 1: I mean.
Speaker 4: That's the thing about though, like they got you by
Speaker 4: the balls, Like you can complain about it, but you
Speaker 4: can't do anything about it. And it frustrates me.
Speaker 1: Listen, like Nintendo, I have issues.
Speaker 4: With your practices, but I can't do anything about it.
Speaker 4: I'm going to buy your game anyway.
Speaker 2: Yeah, at the end of the day.
Speaker 1: At the end of the day, it's a Zelda game
Speaker 1: I've never played, and I want to play it because
Speaker 1: of that. So it's like I'm going to buy it
Speaker 1: no matter what. And they know it and I know it,
Speaker 1: and I I just want to play it because the
Speaker 1: other game I haven't played. I don't I don't care
Speaker 1: about what people are saying, Like some people really like it,
Speaker 1: some people don't. It's pretty mixed, Like it's still just
Speaker 1: a new Zelda.
Speaker 2: Game to me.
Speaker 3: And at this point, they have like what twenty years
Speaker 3: of data of people buying re releases of their games,
Speaker 3: Like like how many of us own the same Mario
Speaker 3: game on like four systems.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: I bought every version of every Pokemon game up through
Speaker 3: like I think up through black and white, but so
Speaker 3: I stopped at black and white.
Speaker 1: But before that, I like, I have red, red, yellow, gold, silver,
Speaker 1: Christians yellow.
Speaker 3: And then I bought yellow and green on three DS
Speaker 3: and I got Crystal while I were like I got
Speaker 3: Gen two, I bought you know, like it's, oh, well,
Speaker 3: you got me, I'm gonna buy it.
Speaker 2: No, I'm counting in my head, right now, and I've
Speaker 2: got to have at least eight devices in my house.
Speaker 2: I can play Super Mario Brothers on and I still
Speaker 2: bought that little game and watch was just Supermiliar Brothers
Speaker 2: on it for like fifty bucks because because I don't know,
Speaker 2: I like giving them money because they make good things
Speaker 2: that make me happy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we just love to spend our money on Nintendo products.
Speaker 3: I recently moved and I was packing up my stuff
Speaker 3: and I forgot that I have three different three DSS.
Speaker 3: I was like, oh, yeah, my Japanese one. Oops.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, oh go ahead, Jake, No, no, you finish.
Speaker 2: Do you have any new three dss or are they all?
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I have a I have a regular three DS XL,
Speaker 3: and then I have my New three DS, and then
Speaker 3: my Japanese three d S which I can't remember if
Speaker 3: it's a new or regular.
Speaker 2: Play the Super Nintendo games on it. I mean, yeah,
Speaker 2: you gotta have that.
Speaker 4: I love the New three DS. I think it's one
Speaker 4: of the most beautifully designed nice hardware is I have
Speaker 4: the one. I have the one with the Famicom colors
Speaker 4: on it, Like, yeah, it's beautiful.
Speaker 3: I think my Japanese one is the new three DS
Speaker 3: because it has the face plates at Jose Otero, formerly
Speaker 3: of of IGN actually currently of Nintendo, gave it to
Speaker 3: me because I had been expressing wanting to play games
Speaker 3: in Japanese to practice and yeah, so that was exciting.
Speaker 3: I think it was before you could get like face
Speaker 3: plates in America.
Speaker 1: Well didn't didn't they not release the smaller new three
Speaker 1: ds in the US for a while like you Can
Speaker 1: Excel or something like that.
Speaker 3: There was a big delay.
Speaker 1: Anyway, we should probably move on. We've been we've been
Speaker 1: here for a while and we still live. The biggest
Speaker 1: one of the biggest announcements talk about Splatoon three day.
Speaker 1: That music, that music is so good it really gets Yeah.
Speaker 3: I so I was really excited because in the past,
Speaker 3: this is just one thing that stuck out to me
Speaker 3: from the trailer.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 3: In the past, you would pick like boy or girls,
Speaker 3: quid kid, and then you would have some customization options
Speaker 3: from there. Uh. But based on the trailer, it looks
Speaker 3: like the options aren't tied to a gender choice. You
Speaker 3: just get to pick your character's appearance and customize with
Speaker 3: what you Yeah, which which is I think a more
Speaker 3: recent trend. A lot of games have been adopting just
Speaker 3: like pick your style, pick your look, kind of phreezing
Speaker 3: at the character creation screen and giving you a little
Speaker 3: bit more flexibility in like what sorts of things you
Speaker 3: equip on, which it's not gender locked, like like even
Speaker 3: like animal crossing, like there's no gender locked clothing or
Speaker 3: anything like that. So that was nice because I think
Speaker 3: that's a really positive trend. I think more games should
Speaker 3: adopt that kind of character creation. And it looks really cool.
Speaker 3: There's a lot like of really cute hairstyles, and you can.
Speaker 4: Play as an Octoling, which is something they added in
Speaker 4: the very underrated Octo expansion.
Speaker 1: And I never finished that so good.
Speaker 4: That's the thing I'm the most excited about potentially is
Speaker 4: like it's so vague, so like you really have like
Speaker 4: you can only speculate, but what they were showing it
Speaker 4: looks like there could be potential for a lot more
Speaker 4: like open world single player exploration, and that I think
Speaker 4: is some of the best stuff in Splatoon that's like
Speaker 4: highly underrated, Like the single players in those games are
Speaker 4: really really good, even though like you know, the multiplayer
Speaker 4: is kind of the main hook. So I'm very very
Speaker 4: fascinating to see if like that's what they're kind of
Speaker 4: building on with. Like I mean, the which I think
Speaker 4: is called Splattsville in this one, yes, is like it
Speaker 4: looked massive in a way that like the Hub area
Speaker 4: and the other Splatoon games never quite were. I'm so
Speaker 4: curious to see like how they're building off of that.
Speaker 4: I'd love for you to like get to like wander
Speaker 4: around and explore the world is like an inkling in
Speaker 4: a way that they never quite did with those other ones.
Speaker 3: Like, especially because the world building in Splatoon is so interesting.
Speaker 3: It's like the post apocalypse and you kind.
Speaker 1: Of saw that at the beginning of the trailer too.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I think it would be cool for them
Speaker 3: to expand on that. And before I forget, they also
Speaker 3: showed off a new kind of weapon, which is the bow.
Speaker 1: Mm hmm. That's cool.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you were talking about the world or the world exploration.
Speaker 2: I think one of the things that gets lost in Splatoon,
Speaker 2: which we tend to think of more as a shooter
Speaker 2: because it's hot marketed, is that Splatoon's kind of the
Speaker 2: secret sequel to Kubert, Like it's it's not a game
Speaker 2: about shooting, it's a game about area control. It's it's
Speaker 2: about literally changing ground to your color. It is Kubert too,
Speaker 2: and it happens to be a multiplayer and competitive, but
Speaker 2: that's that's almost secondary. It's a game about controlling space.
Speaker 2: So you're right, the first player campaigns are fantastic. And
Speaker 2: the idea of building out when the game have a
Speaker 2: game that's already about exploring a controlling space, if you
Speaker 2: could build those themes into a broader world exploration in
Speaker 2: a single player campaign, I think that's kind of a
Speaker 2: natural fit that I really really hope they run with. Also,
Speaker 2: another thought I had watching that trailer is I want
Speaker 2: like a Mike Bithel's Subsurface Circular like spinoff that's just
Speaker 2: you riding that train full of fish people. I want
Speaker 2: to play an adventure game where I'm talking to the
Speaker 2: fish that's riding on the train through the desert. I
Speaker 2: want to know what's going on there.
Speaker 4: It's such a good spirit I was getting from the Yeah,
Speaker 4: I felt intentional. I feel like that had to be.
Speaker 4: Splatoon likes to do like weird referential stuff like that.
Speaker 4: They did like a Biggie and Tupac thing in the Octoexpedion.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's really good.
Speaker 4: Yeah, if this game, I mean, I'm i don't want
Speaker 4: to get my hopes up, but if this game could
Speaker 4: be like the Mario Odyssey of Splatoon games, like sign
Speaker 4: Me Up. Maybe I'm getting my hopes up too much
Speaker 4: for that, but I'm very excited for more Splatoon.
Speaker 1: Well, we should probably move on to listener questions. We're
Speaker 1: only going to do two. We'll do them pretty quickly.
Speaker 1: But if you've got any questions for us, you can
Speaker 1: email us at after Dark Podcast at readventures dot com
Speaker 1: because it turns out that works. Eventually, after Dark Podcast
Speaker 1: at GameSpot should work again, But like I said last week,
Speaker 1: we're still kind of in the process of transitioning things
Speaker 1: and aliases and whatnot. But if you don't want to
Speaker 1: email us, you can always join our discord. And both
Speaker 1: questions today came from our discord, the first of which
Speaker 1: is from Kevin from West Hartford, who used to send
Speaker 1: in a lot of questions and I think he did,
Speaker 1: but he was doing them through emails, so he kind
Speaker 1: of lost him. So it's been a while since we've
Speaker 1: gotten a Kevin from West Hartford question, Cali, do you
Speaker 1: want to read this one?
Speaker 3: Yes, welcome back, Kevin. Hey, after Dark Crew, is there
Speaker 3: a mechanic or system in a genre that instantly makes
Speaker 3: you like a game more. For example, in turn based RPGs,
Speaker 3: I prefer when the two rival parties take turns mixed
Speaker 3: together based on a speed set, rather than each party
Speaker 3: taking a turn as a team. That's an interesting one now,
Speaker 3: I got to like that specific example, but also an
Speaker 3: interesting question. I think I like management sim elements in
Speaker 3: any game, like something that really enhanced Three Houses for me,
Speaker 3: what fire imblem three Houses was the ability to like
Speaker 3: set lesson plans and like basically tailor everyone to my
Speaker 3: exact specifications and to minmx my time, and like.
Speaker 1: Can I actually be a dragon? Like no, no, this
Speaker 1: is not.
Speaker 3: Absolutely absolutely not unless you're Sylvain, in which case sure,
Speaker 3: and I guess to kind of an extension of that
Speaker 3: would be I also just really like having to make
Speaker 3: the most of my time, which is something that I've
Speaker 3: been enjoying in Person of five, even though it's extremely
Speaker 3: stressful because I didn't know what was coming, so I
Speaker 3: wasn't able to plan ahead as much. But I like
Speaker 3: those kinds of mechanics where I just get to exert
Speaker 3: some sort of weird control over something.
Speaker 1: I don't know if this is a mechanic necessarily, but
Speaker 1: I love it when a game takes away a lot
Speaker 1: of information that games give you, like here's your health bar,
Speaker 1: here's where you are on this map, here's here's a
Speaker 1: compass that you'll probably never need, but we're going to
Speaker 1: give it to you anyway. I like it when you're more,
Speaker 1: when you let loose to explore a little bit. I think,
Speaker 1: like I always love just turning off HUDs in games
Speaker 1: and playing it that way. Like Ghost Reecon Breakpoint is
Speaker 1: a game that I returned to recently. At launch wasn't
Speaker 1: very good, but when you turn off all that extra
Speaker 1: info the game throws at you, it's actually like a
Speaker 1: very intense, cooperative tactical shooter, which is so different than
Speaker 1: what it launched as it was like a weird destiny
Speaker 1: like gear chase game. So I guess that, in particular
Speaker 1: is one to go with. Or Red Dead two, for example,
Speaker 1: you could turn off the HUD and they even said
Speaker 1: characters would like tell you where to go if you
Speaker 1: turn off the HUD. That kind of works sometimes other
Speaker 1: times it didn't. But like I've played so much Red
Speaker 1: Dead too where I've gotten to the point where I
Speaker 1: don't need the HUT and I know where I am
Speaker 1: and how to get around, and part of that too,
Speaker 1: is just good due to really good world design and
Speaker 1: what are the Weeni's good wienie placement.
Speaker 2: I don't like that. I mean, everybody loves a good wing.
Speaker 2: I mean, that's that's true. Jake, have you ever played
Speaker 2: Bishida Blade?
Speaker 1: I haven't.
Speaker 2: No, Okay, that seems like a Jake game, a fight
Speaker 2: fighting game with no life bars, Like, all right, you
Speaker 2: gotta play this game square INIX back in the day,
Speaker 2: Total classic. But yeah, no life bars, fighting game. You
Speaker 2: know you'll love it.
Speaker 1: All right, I'll check that out for me.
Speaker 2: I think it's uh directly gaining health for damaging enemies. Uh.
Speaker 2: The first game I've ever encountered this in was was
Speaker 2: Go Go thirteen back on the Ness, and it pops
Speaker 2: up every every now and then. Bloodborne has a version
Speaker 2: of it, for example.
Speaker 1: But I heard of that game, huh, I said, I've
Speaker 1: never heard of it because Tamoor talks about it every week.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I probably talk about it once a week.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, but yeah, continue to talk about it is excellent.
Speaker 2: Well, it doesn't. It doesn't show up very often, but
Speaker 2: it pops up every now and then. This kind of
Speaker 2: and I'm talking about a life drop, but like being
Speaker 2: directly rewarded for thoughtful aggression, being in danger of dying
Speaker 2: and realizing the only way to get out of it
Speaker 2: is to hurt enemies. Like I love that because you
Speaker 2: can't just barrel in or you'll keel over. But at
Speaker 2: the same time, there's this you know, went out numbered
Speaker 2: when overwhelmed attack and it moves you to feel more
Speaker 2: heroic in the game because when it works, you're healed,
Speaker 2: enemies are down, you're awesome. Power fantasy played out, and
Speaker 2: when it doesn't, you've got that tension. You're like, ah,
Speaker 2: I went out, but I went out swinging and it's fun.
Speaker 2: So I really love that mechanic and I'd like to
Speaker 2: see it more in games.
Speaker 4: The first thing that came to mind of me was
Speaker 4: the actor reload and Gears of War, Like, I love
Speaker 4: the idea of just taking like what's like a very
Speaker 4: standard thing you do in like every shooter and just
Speaker 4: like adding that little extra thing you need to like
Speaker 4: potentially think about where like if you just hit the
Speaker 4: button just right and then it becomes this like muscle
Speaker 4: memory where you just like you know exactly when to
Speaker 4: hit it and it adds this extra extra like incentive
Speaker 4: and like boost to like combat, which you know, like
Speaker 4: I like stuff like that. I would also say, like
Speaker 4: thinking about out Persona, I love I think that Persona
Speaker 4: five in particular is maybe my favorite turn based combat
Speaker 4: because they said all these little tweaks because on the surface,
Speaker 4: it's like very standard turn based combat, but just like
Speaker 4: you know, like that thing of like you hit an enemy,
Speaker 4: you can do one more, you can baton pass. The
Speaker 4: change to the baton pass from like regular five to
Speaker 4: Royal and having that be there, like and the way
Speaker 4: you can chain it, and they added this little boost
Speaker 4: where not only can you chain it, but in Royal
Speaker 4: it'll actually like increase the damage and increases like you
Speaker 4: gain regain sp and it just like incentivizes you to
Speaker 4: like think of it's almost like a puzzle game where
Speaker 4: you're like, how do I, like, what sequence of attacks
Speaker 4: do I need to do to chain a baton pass
Speaker 4: through my entire party so that my final character has
Speaker 4: this like super attack they can do at the very end.
Speaker 4: It's such a small change, but it completely alters the
Speaker 4: way you like think of of a standard battles in
Speaker 4: that game. And I think it's such a great addition,
Speaker 4: I agree.
Speaker 1: M next question is from Aaron. If you had to
Speaker 1: join one evil video game faction culture group, what would
Speaker 1: it be? Mine would be Team Yell from Pokemon, Sword
Speaker 1: and Shield because all they seem to do is walk
Speaker 1: around holding megaphones and raising Pokemon. I was thinking about
Speaker 1: this and I have nothing yet, so I gotta think more.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's hard because I don't. Yes, listen, I'm going
Speaker 3: to level with all of you. The obvious answer for me,
Speaker 3: CALLI Plaguey is tea Magma. So I think, just based
Speaker 3: on everything that's happened in my life, in my career,
Speaker 3: in my world, I am contractually obligated to say tea
Speaker 3: magma because you know, they want like they saw, they
Speaker 3: saw the problems with Howen. They were like, it is god,
Speaker 3: you gotta dive. Oh my god, you gotta the waterfalls,
Speaker 3: you gotta surface so much, you're never gonna use a
Speaker 3: fire Pokemon again. And then they were like, would we
Speaker 3: are eco terrorists? However we have Uh, we see the
Speaker 3: issues in this world and we know you Kali are
Speaker 3: correct and uh, and they said let's let's do it.
Speaker 1: So I that's my choice.
Speaker 2: Mine is whoever is trying to destroy a knack at
Speaker 2: that particular moment.
Speaker 1: That's a good answer. That's a really good answer. I
Speaker 1: should have said something before that, because I won't talk that.
Speaker 1: Both of those are really good answers.
Speaker 4: I don't have one. I'm like because every every time
Speaker 4: I think of like an evil faction, I'm like, like, ah,
Speaker 4: the one that's like Nazis. No, don't want to join that.
Speaker 4: Most most video game bosses are just.
Speaker 3: Nazis. Yeah, yeah, a lot of them are just Nazis.
Speaker 4: Maybe maybe uh, Big Bosses, Diamond Dogs, they're kind of evil.
Speaker 4: I don't know, well, like when they're Diamond Dogs or not,
Speaker 4: but I guess they eventually become the evil faction. But
Speaker 4: they're fighting for a just cause in a better world
Speaker 4: and they're fighting against the Patriots, So are they the
Speaker 4: bad guys? I don't know. Metal Gears confusing, but I'm
Speaker 4: gonna say that Big Boss whatever Big Bosses side.
Speaker 2: Is Metal Gears confusing as a whole mood, Like that's.
Speaker 1: Oh man, I'm not sure. I even opened up my
Speaker 1: my Steam account just to scroll through these games and
Speaker 1: see if there's one that would be cool to be
Speaker 1: a part of. But I feel like most of the
Speaker 1: games I'm into are like very serious and like I
Speaker 1: wouldn't want to be any of the villains in The
Speaker 1: Witcher or anything like that.
Speaker 3: Jake, I have the perfect answer for you, all right,
Speaker 3: whenever you're on defense and siege, you want to be attack.
Speaker 1: That's true. I don't like being defense in siege. So
Speaker 1: half of siege is excellent, the other half is pretty boring.
Speaker 3: I'm going to answer for Jake and say, just attack
Speaker 3: the attack team.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's probably a good that's probably a good answer.
Speaker 1: Maybe I'd want to be like one of the bad
Speaker 1: guys and dark souls, one of the ones that are
Speaker 1: like hiding behind a door that the player isn't going
Speaker 1: to see and then they just walk in and it's
Speaker 1: like big X to the face and you're prepared for that.
Speaker 1: Now you're dead by patches.
Speaker 3: What about patches?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, help out patches.
Speaker 3: That's a stupid profile picture of patches.
Speaker 1: Anyway. That's been episode eighty one of Game Spot After Dark.
Speaker 1: Thank you all so much for joining, and thank you
Speaker 1: Jared for taking the time.
Speaker 2: The Joe.
Speaker 1: That was a lot of fun, and thank you all
Speaker 1: out there for listening. Before we go, Kelly, what are
Speaker 1: you up to and where can people find you on Twitter?
Speaker 3: Uh, you can find me on Twitter at ike doogico
Speaker 3: I n k y d o j I kko and.
Speaker 1: You know me.
Speaker 3: Well, well, you know this doesn't affect any of you
Speaker 3: at home. But I finally released the style Guide. I've
Speaker 3: been working on case and I am stoked about it.
Speaker 3: It's internal only. I'm so sorry, but that was a
Speaker 3: big uh when I say that I'm just working on
Speaker 3: behind the scenes stuff, that was a big behind the
Speaker 3: scenes just kind of internal uh, you know, editor kind
Speaker 3: of stuff that I was working on. So that was
Speaker 3: really exciting.
Speaker 1: And then I've been refreshed in like since like two
Speaker 1: thousand and eight.
Speaker 3: Or something, wasn't it the Yeah, the old style Guide
Speaker 3: was so old that the formatting broke Google Docs and
Speaker 3: it didn't like it just was unreadable. So I basically, uh,
Speaker 3: with some help from some of the other editors, uh,
Speaker 3: we built it from the ground up. That's an exciting thing.
Speaker 3: So I've been doing a lot of that kind of thing,
Speaker 3: not as as many reviews, not as as many forward
Speaker 3: facing facing things. But you know, festival is over, But
Speaker 3: if you want to go give that guide a view,
Speaker 3: it would mean a lot to me. That was my
Speaker 3: whole day on Monday. I could have taken the day
Speaker 3: off and instead I collected feathers and it took a
Speaker 3: lot of time.
Speaker 1: And yeah, you know, you know me, John Luke, how
Speaker 1: about you.
Speaker 4: You can find me at John lack Syke. I'm I
Speaker 4: don't know, and I'm working on that. I'm working in
Speaker 4: the background on some some new stuff that's probably not
Speaker 4: gonna happen for another week or so. Uh, I don't know.
Speaker 4: I'm making I'm making things right now. I swear we're working.
Speaker 4: I made Oh, I made like a I did a
Speaker 4: Destiny comparison because they put the strike from the first
Speaker 4: game into the new one. So I did like a
Speaker 4: video comparison. That's what I did today. I forgot. I
Speaker 4: don't know. It's my brand's a mess. Just go check
Speaker 4: that out when it goes up.
Speaker 1: You can find me at Jacob Deck. And there should
Speaker 1: be an episode of Dirty r D coming soon, which
Speaker 1: we haven't done in a long time. Rob and I
Speaker 1: are giving it one final goodbye, which should be fun,
Speaker 1: So look out for that. I don't know, and that's
Speaker 1: going to be But you should also check out Jared's
Speaker 1: top one hundred Games Podcast, jaredy Can people find you
Speaker 1: and what are some things you'd like to plug?
Speaker 2: Yeah, you can find me at Petty Comma Jared on Twitter.
Speaker 2: That's b T T Y C O M M A
Speaker 2: J A R E D. Where you can find leftist politics,
Speaker 2: video games stuff, and occasionally meet pontificating on how we
Speaker 2: all ought to be nice to each other. That's pretty
Speaker 2: much the three things you're going to find there. If
Speaker 2: you want to listen to the Top one hundred Games Pod,
Speaker 2: I think you should because it's fun. You can find
Speaker 2: that on Apple Podcasts, on Google podcast and Android, on Stitcher,
Speaker 2: on Spotify, it's all those places. Just search for Top
Speaker 2: one hundred Games Podcast or Top one hundred Games Podcast
Speaker 2: with Jered Petty. If you like listening to delightful people
Speaker 2: talk about games they love and just cheer some anecdotes
Speaker 2: about the pure joy and wonder of this art form
Speaker 2: and all the best things about it, it's a good
Speaker 2: place to go do that. So I really hope you
Speaker 2: will just just go take a look at that. That's
Speaker 2: what I'm up to so and again genuinely and just
Speaker 2: just thoroughly thrilled to get to be a part of
Speaker 2: the show. I like the show, I like what you
Speaker 2: do here, I like the work you do in the
Speaker 2: podcast and outside, and it's good to know all of you.
Speaker 2: It's really great to meet John Luke. Thank you all
Speaker 2: for thank you for joining us.
Speaker 1: It was an absolute pleasure, had a lot of fun,
Speaker 1: all right. Well with that, we will see you all
Speaker 1: next week. Don't something