Speaker 1: Hey, everyone, Welcome to the Game and Former Show, a
weekly podcast covering the video game industry. Join us each
and every Thursday for a discussion on the latest gaming news, reviews,
and exclusive reveals with Game and Former staff and special
guests from around the industry. I am your host, Marcus Stewart.
I am joined by the Newshound himself, Wesley LeBlanc.
Speaker 2: Hello, Hello, I'm COVID free this week.
Speaker 1: Let's go Hell yeah, appreciate you trucking through last week.
I was listening to the show and you sounded fighting
for your life.
Speaker 2: Honestly, I did listen to it back and I was like, oh, yeah,
he definitely, he definitely has COVID. I I felt decent
enough to record, but I sounded like way worse.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, glad you sound better this week. You know
sounds good. You know him, you love him? Are newest higher?
What his velvety voice, mister Eric Van Allen, Hello, velvety,
velvety voice. I've never been told that before. No, you
got that, Belvis.
Speaker 3: Usually I get told I have a face for radio.
So that's that's a nice little compliment to get every
now and then.
Speaker 1: It's like, I like to think some of the hottest
people on Earth working radio.
Speaker 3: Honestly, they do meet your local radio co hosts, you know,
while it still exists, while radio is still around.
Speaker 1: Yes, and we've got a special guest making his first
appearance on the game and former show Freelance or Extraordinary.
You can find his work at en Verse and Rolling Stone.
Mister Hayes Mattson, how are you hello?
Speaker 4: I'm good, Thank you for having me. Ah, absolute pleasure.
Speaker 1: Honestly, absolutely. What are your thoughts about the state of
appearance in radio? Do you think I think we've hit
a new high in terms of attractiveness? And where would
you rank each of us on that list? Just putting
you on the spot right away.
Speaker 3: No no, no, no, no, no, no no no no.
Speaker 2: You're just gonna say, like, what are your thoughts?
Speaker 1: What are your thoughts? What are you thinking?
Speaker 4: I think I listened to local radio a lot, and
I agree that hot people are on the radio, honestly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we're talking about the the Cuba Gooding Junior Movie Radio.
Speaker 3: Actually okay, yeah, yeah, classic two thousand threes finess I
think it was that year.
Speaker 1: But yes, we've got a big show today. We're gonna
be talking with Hayes and Wesley about Fantom Blade zero.
You guys took a trip all the way to China,
which is still pretty wild to go play the game.
You guys got to go like a cool ass event, Wesley,
and I think Hayes you were there for this two.
You guys went to the Great Wall of China and
nothing went wrong. It sounded like it was just a
completely smooth journey to one of the literal world won.
So we're excited to hear all about that. I'm gonna
be talking about a cool little game I played recently
called and Roger, and then we're gonna round out the
show with us going down our most anticipated games of
twenty twenty five, the remainder of the year, starting pretty
much from now throughout December. We got our handy dandy
release calendar up, which you can find on gameformer dot com,
and we're just gonna be shouting out some stuff that
we're personally excited about and maybe what we think you
guys should maybe keep an eye on. And yeah, it
would be a very fun show. But before we get
in all that, if you want to support Game Informer,
the best thing you can do is subscribe to Game
Informer magazine, which is what we're known for. We've been
making video game magazine since nineteen ninety one. If you're
watching the video version right now, you can see Wesley
and Eric holding up our two issues that we put
out since Game Informer came back. We got the Borderlands
four issue. We've got our latest issue, which is for
Vampire to Masquerade Bloodlines two. As we've said over and over,
this isn't the Game and Former magazine. If your grandpa
or your dad, this is brand new, better paper. It's bigger,
the covers are glossier. You can hug it like it's
your own child, much like Wesley is doing. And look
at this, look at the beautiful artwork inside. It's an amazing,
an amazing piece of print that we put together ten
issues a year, and if you would like to have
those issues delivered to your door, you can go on
Game Informer dot com slash subscribe. Our standard pricing is
generally seventy dollars for ten issues. It gets to the
physical and digital issue, or if you are overseas because
we only shiftedmestically in the US unfortunately, you can get
the digital issue just for forty five dollars annually. There's
generally there's sometimes sales prices that I won't list right
now because it changes all the times about a time.
If I were to say a certain sales price, it
might not be there by the time you listen to this.
So I'd say, go to Game Informer dot com slash subscribe.
See what's going on right there, right now. But if
you enjoy Game Informer, we urge you to subscribe. And
also five percent of every subscription goes to Saint Jude's
Children's Hospitals. And not only are helping us, but you're
helping a lot of sick kids. It's a really great cause.
And yes, we appreciate the support as always and as usual, Yes,
without further ado, Wesley Hayes, you guys went to China,
what like two weeks ago or however long it was ago? Uh? Yeah,
how was the how this happen? Anyway? Because I don't
have all the trips I hear in the game industry
of people being flown all over the place, China is
the one that really you see pop up a lot. Hayes,
I'll start with you, how how was the trip? Have
you been to China before? And how was it?
Speaker 3: Uh?
Speaker 4: No, I've never been to China, and I before then,
I'd actually never been outside of the United States. So
this is my first international trip, and it's a big
international trip to take. You know, we'll talk about it more,
but it was. It was fascinating, Honestly it was. We
spent a lot of time in Beijing and then a
couple of days in Shanghai, two very different cities. Shanghai
is very like, technologically advanced, and Beijing felt very traditional,
I think old traditional, like not in a bad way,
but you know, food was phenomenal, probably some of the
best food I've had in my life. Since I've gotten back,
I've told everyone that, like, I don't think I can
have Chinese food for a couple months because I'm just
going to be extremely disappointed by whatever I eat. We
went to the Great Wall, we saw the bund in Shanghai.
We went to Phantom Blades MOCAP studio. I was absolutely
one of the most fascinating behind the scenes looks I've
ever had in a game.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's why you guys were there. Primarily was
to go to a big event hosted by is it
S Games, the developer of a fanom Blade zero they
had this giganme like thousands of people showed up at this.
I think Wesley and your previews. You have a big
preview and a travel log again our upcoming issue of
the magazine talking about this, and looked like it was
in a big like steel mill or something.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was a it's called park. Yeah, it's a
like decommissioned iron factory that's like a megacomplex. It's like
multiple square acres of land, and it was the ho
it was host to like the two thousand something early
two thousand Olympics and the twenty twenty two Winter Olympics,
and now it's like a it still stands like it's
still an old iron factory you can tour, but they
turned it into the place of this gigantic S party,
which yeah, we were there for like a preview to
preview the game, but we were there alongside hundreds of
content creators and influencers and then like up to two
thousand members of like the public, just like Chinese locals
who wanted to play this game. So it was less
that we were there on like a preview trip and
more that we were invited to an event equivalent of
something we'd have here like in the States. It was
a pretty nuts.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I'm curious about what you guys played, because
I played the game last year in Games Calm, and
it was about, I think, like an hour demo. It
was kind of it was like in a section where
you just killed a few enemies and then got to
a boss at the end. I couldn't tell you much
about like just the environment because it was kind of
just like like it didn't stand out, not that it
was bad, it was just like, oh, you're like in
a Chinese environment and you're fighting for a temple, and
like I think that I took away to most was
just like how good the combat felt and how great
the animation was loved, Like, how was the demo? Like,
did you guys enjoy the game?
Speaker 2: I'll let you go forays.
Speaker 4: Yeah, oh sure, Yeah, so the demo you played, I
played that at GDC. This demo. If you saw the
Year of the Snake trailer, which has like the Disciple
boss where you're fighting seven different disciples, that's what this
demo is. But it's the entire level leading up to
that boss, which apparently this level is a side area
in the game. They've said that multiple times that this
is completely a side area and optional and all that.
But you got more of a sense with this demo
of the structure of the game. Like we've seen the
combat a few times, but here we got to see
kind of the level design, which is very inspired by
Dark Souls. Its Souls like level design kind of grafted
onto a high intensity Devil May Cry kind of combat system.
So it's not a Soul's like, but it has souls
like elements to it.
Speaker 1: I think it's an important distinction. I think a lot
of the trailers gave the impression of a Soul's like
and when I played it at games Calm, I was like,
oh no, this is much closer to like a regular
stylish action game.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're actively He's the director Soul Frame, who me
and Hayes both talked to which Soul Frame. Which is
Soul Frame. Yeah, and this is before Soul Frame was
announced by the war Frame.
Speaker 3: Okay, I was going to ask, Yeah, he's not situation.
Speaker 4: He's not like.
Speaker 2: Grafting onto this new ip quickly. He's like, but no,
he he's very like intentional with like we are inspired
by souls like level design, not like to a degree
of like copying. It's very inspired, but like, we actively
do not want our game to feel like playing a
Soul's Like in terms of combat and challenge, Like you
are supposed to feel like a badass martial artists who
is incredible at what they do. There is some challenge.
And then somebody told me in my interview which I
can't remember if it's in my feature, that's going to
be an upcoming issue. But like for him, he says,
it's kind of silly, and maybe he's talking of other
developers who knows that for a team who's developing their
first like Triple A game, because this is you know,
they mostly do mobile games and this is their first
big breakthrough Triple A game to try to do a
Soul's like because the souls like requires like trust from
the player and you have to earn that. You have
to earn the ability to be like, I'm going to
screw you over and over and over, but I promise
the reward at the end is going to be a
sense of accomplishment that you can't get in other games,
which is what from Software is mastered. And he's like,
we're not going to do that. We don't have the
trust of players. Yet instead, we're going to focus on
Chinese martial arts and making you feel really cool while
defeating these enemies in very glorious fashions.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what's the premise of this game? Exactly?
Speaker 2: Like, that's a great question. Who knows't We didn't get
to find out anything really about the story.
Speaker 4: I do have a little bit of insight into this story.
It's the point they haven't talked a lot about yet.
But essentially, you play as a character named Soul who's
this like martial artist, very inspired by like heroes from
Wusha films, and you're in this like decaying world and
Soul has only a number of days to live and
he's trying to take down some kind of assassin organization.
But the big thing I know about the story is
that when I talked to him a GDC, they showed
me these three pillars for the game, where it was
level design inspired by Soul's likes, combat inspired by Devil
May Cry, and a cinematic story inspired by Resident Evil
and Alan Wake. And when I talked to Soul frame
this time, he said that the inspiration there is a
tinge of horror. It's not a horror game, but like
Resident Evil or Alan Wake. There are like horror vibes
to it, so it's kind of this decrepit world what
they call. They've coined the term kung fu punk for
their kind of world and their esthetic, where it's steampunk
mixed with traditional Chinese martial arts and kung fu and
things like that. So essentially, you're playing as a character
who has days to live trying to take down some
kind of shadowy assassin organization in a Wusha inspired setting.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and for those that don't know what wusha is, like,
it's a specific genre of martial arts film. The easiest
shorthand is probably Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon in terms of
the most well known. Definitely popularized it here. Yeah yeah,
so like yeah, kind of like Chinese martial arts, but
with like a lot of kind of fantastical elements mixed in. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Something also fun about the games, not story really, but
the protagonist is also named Soul. Yeah so okay, I
love it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, really good. Actually, this Phantom Blade zero is based
on a mobile game that s Game made called rain
Blood like a decade ago. It's the Soul was the
main character there. It's the same world called the Phantom
World but it's this game has kind of allowed them
to fully deliver on the vision that they had with
that mobile game.
Speaker 3: I feel like we're seeing a lot of that recently
with mobile games specifically moving into premium products. A Dungeon
Fighter was doing it, a DNF whatever, Grand Blue has
been doing that.
Speaker 1: Honor of Kings or even just mobile developers getting more
into the triple A space, especially in Asia and over. Yeah,
like Stellar Blades probably maybe the best example of what
I did.
Speaker 2: A one of my last features in our old gi
era was like a big wide swath. Look at like
South Korean development, and it is a lot of mobile
developers who are like we have we've kind of reached
our limit in the mobile market, and a lot of
players over there are moving from mobile to consoles and
PCs now. So instead of like relying on mobile market,
we're going to continue our mobile games and build these
console games, which Japan has done for years. Obviously Japan
is their game development scene goes way back. South Korea
is starting to do the same and now talking with
Soul Frame and he has a lot of industry friends
obviously in China, he said, like the same things happening
in China's like a lot of these teams are. They've
made money on mobile games, they're ready to to push
for new audiences and new limits on console and p see,
and that's what we're seeing happening here. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Interesting, this is a premium game, right, This is not
any like it is what you would traditionally consider like
a box, you know, buy at once play it sort
of thing, rather than a free to play gotcha style
anything like that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is a single player action RPG, and PlayStation
is partnered with them. I don't think publishing is the
right word. I don't know if they're publishing. Soul Frame
was very cautious. He just kept saying partnered, So like
PlayStation has partnered with them. I don't know if it's
part of the that Hero project, which I know is
like another of.
Speaker 4: The specific China Hero project. But PlayStation is marketing it
to a degree because it was revealed during a state
of play. It was like the close out trailer in
a state of play.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Something that I learned from talking to him was
this game has it's got a lot of excitement behind it.
I think one that has to do with like Blackmith,
Wukong's six Last year, you know, multiple million copies sold
and like a lot of eyes on the Chinese game
development scene now and people are kind of looking at
this game as one of those, like one of the
next games.
Speaker 1: To do that.
Speaker 2: But he told me, like when they announced the game,
when they revealed the game in the PlayStation showcase, he
did not know, like they did not realize that was happening.
And then it happened, and he was like, oh, we're
not like close to being done, and people are very
excited about this game.
Speaker 1: He asked me to send them a trailer.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like they get yeah, they get launched to this
like main stage. And then I can't remem if it
was him telling me or maybe he told you Hayes
at a different maybe a GDC, that the same thing
happened with the Game Awards. Was it two years ago
or this recent one.
Speaker 4: Uh, I can't remember if it. I don't think it
was last year. I think it was two years ago.
But they had a trailer at the Game Awards and
he said that and they closed the show. Yeah, they
sent the trailer in, but they didn't know where it
would appear. They just thought they'd be in the show.
And then the game War's happened and they were the
big closeout trailer and I was like, oh, okay.
Speaker 2: And so like, there's this team of what I think
forty ish people developing this cool kung fu punk game,
and multiple times now it's been like grand staged in
front of the world and they're like and people are
clamoring for it, and they're like, whoa, We're just we're
just making our game. We didn't know we were gonna
be like continually pushed up this way. That said, though,
good on this team, because like they're rising the occasion, well,
at least what I've played so far. I'm I am really,
really really stoked about this game. It's easily one of
my most anticipated for next year, even though they haven't
said when it's coming out. I definitely don't think it's coming.
Speaker 3: Out this year.
Speaker 2: It's a good it's a good action game.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I also, like, I want to touch on the
animation because that's something that was a big sticking point
in some of your writings, and it even when I
played it last year, and that was something I was like,
this looks so fluid, and I like, I don't know
if I automtically assumed it was mo cap, but it
was like like apparently they actually got a bunch of
like legitimate like martial artists in the MOCAP studio to
capture all the movements for the characters. And you got
to do a bit of that too because you also
also a Chinese martial artists.
Speaker 2: Don't know, people know, Yeah, as a Chinese martial artists. Uh.
We went to Shanghai and they we went to their
MOCAP studio and yeah, they had like ten or eleven
uh men and women who were just like these incredible
martial artists like doing stuff. They had like the harnesses
all the way to the ceilings and like the things
around their waist where they could spin in the air.
They're doing like flips over each other, doing like the
parallel leading spinning over. It's it was the coolest thing
they're just having literally, yeah exactly. And then that we'd
see like on the screen it appearing like in game,
you know, in like a gray scaled flat environment development.
And yeah, basically like everything you see in the game,
all the the animation. I don't want to say all
of it, but I imagine like ninety nine percent of it
is mo capped to a degree where like, oh, if
Soul's performing move, somebody performed that on a sound stage.
Those enemies jumping off that horse and doing a flip
in the air, whatever, somebody performed that on a sound stage.
And like you said, what you get is this incredibly fluid,
sick looking animation that is seems like it's I think
it's like a I don't want to say New Frontier,
but like it's somewhere the action genre could go, because
it really does add this whole new level of authenticity
where you're like wow, like, especially knowing what I saw
in game people performed. It just adds this crazy level
of immersion where it's like, yo, this is real, Like
people did this and I'm doing it now. This is
so sick.
Speaker 4: And they've been doing that for years too. They've been
mo capping for years. Their action director is named Master
Yang and he's he's a master in kung fu. He
went to school in China for kung fu. And I
was told that they've been obviously I don't know to
what degree, but mocap Works started in twenty eighteen, so
they've been doing it for for a long time. And
like Wesley said, you know, every action in this game
is mo capped, even like certain enemies, like flying enemies,
you know that's mo capped with a base and holes
are kind of filled in with animation where it needs
to be, especially in fights like the disciple fight where
you have seven different characters and it's hard to mo
cap seven different people. So if you have characters rolling
around or going in front of each other, things might
get blocked off. So it's all mo capped, but then
there's animation layered in to kind of smooth it over
and fill in the gaps.
Speaker 1: And is oh, go ahead, you finish your thought.
Speaker 2: I was just gonna say, Master Yang like he is
working these men and women we had to go through
like this little he taught us like the five base
moves of Chinese kung fu, like the five poses, and
let me tell you a bunch of like journalists impressed
and they're doing these Dude, we were sweating. I was
drenched trying to do these moves, and he was not
like he's like him and his crew were not letting
other like they're like.
Speaker 4: Simple stuff, like the most basic basic forms.
Speaker 2: And they're like getting onto us about getting our hands
right and all this stuff. And I'm like, Yo, I'm
here for work. I'm not trying to work out right now,
I am dying and you are pushing me stop.
Speaker 4: There were points where it was like, my legs just
literally will not move like that no matter what I do.
Speaker 3: Like a fight at the end of this That's what
it was, Like, What's what's happening here at the end, Yeah,
we're going to fight each other.
Speaker 2: Like what it was to eventually get in the mocap wires,
which I did, and I was not good at it,
and I was I was so bad at it that
I didn't get to try a backflip, which if you
were good enough, if you did the like first couple
steps correctly, like the matrix run through the air and stuff,
you could eventually move on to try the backflip. But
I could not get the matrix step down. And Master
Yang came up to me, and he through the translator,
was like tell him, uh, maybe we can keep working
on it and next time we can try. The next time,
just tell me I suck and I'll move on.
Speaker 1: Dude's trying to be polite. Let you down lightly. Yeah,
that's awesome, And I guess to wrap this up, you guys.
Also because I I love hearing about this. You know,
the game may not be a soul's like, but it
sounds like you had a soul's ish experience just trying
to give to the Great Wall of China, which is
a one I'm super jealous of you because that's one
of my bucket list places. I'm really I'm jealous, but
I'm very happy for you guys that you guys got
to go do that. But also, you know, Wes, I'll
pass it on to you. It sounds like it was
not as that is easy, and maybe it could have been.
Speaker 2: Well, I'm going to pass on to Haes because I
actually wrote about it in our issue, and I want
to save my perspective. I mean, in my perspective is
basically the same as Hayes. We were together the whole time,
but yeah, take it away. It was as a crazy story.
Speaker 4: So we you know, we had like one day free
the trip basically, and we both agreed that like, from
going to China, I want to go to the Great Vault.
So we bought tour tickets the night before and then
Wesley got a message that morning that was like, well,
the section of the wall you're going to has been
closed because of like level red warning for geologic disaster
or something, because there had been flooding in northern China.
So we tried to figure out a different section to
go to, and the tour guiy told us it was closed,
and we had someone called and they're like, oh, no,
this section's open. It's not closed. So we spent the
day trying to figure out what section we could go to,
and we finally figured out it was open, but ticket
sales would close at four thirty. So we got a
d D, which is the equivalent of Uber like an
hour and a half trip, basically fifteen dollars. Everything is
incredibly cheap there, and so we got dropped off at
the wrong place. We got dropped off at a visitors
center that was closed, so we didn't know where to go,
and we were trying to figure out. We were asking people,
there's a surprise language party. Four. It was US two
and two journalists.
Speaker 2: Us to West Finlan at a gamer and Alejandro at
a what's the name of the site? Three?
Speaker 1: Yes and Spain, Yeah, your RPG party.
Speaker 4: Yeah. So there's a surprising language barrier in China, as
we both found out, like very very few people speak English,
but everyone's very nice and willing to try and communicate
with you. So we're using like translation apps to talk
to officers and tourists and trying to figure out where
we're supposed to go. And there's this taxi driver that
overhears us asking people and he doesn't speak a lick
of English, but all of a sudden, he's like, come
with me, come on. He just starts waving to us
and he rushes us over his vehicle. Yeah, and so
like we're already, we've already bought in. So I think
all of us are just like whatever, because.
Speaker 3: Bill goes off in my like literally, if y'all can
see our disc right now, it was like one side
of the discord was like, yeah, let's get in a taxi,
and then Marcus and I are like, yeah, what is.
Speaker 2: Only ninety minutes up into the mountain.
Speaker 4: It was a with like a real taxi with.
Speaker 1: A strange man saying no, no, no, come on in.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but we get in this car and this is
this is the part. Like we get in his car
and he speeds off and he like speeds past these
officers at a barrier and he is like flying through
the mountain passes playing Mario Kart. He is laying on
his horn to get people to jump out of the way.
Speaker 2: Like literally he's on his phone watching like they don't
have TikTok in China, but they have like an equivalent,
and he's on his phone like while driving, he's scrolling
watching videos like laughing, like this is it's felt like
out of a movie scene. And we're all just like,
I don't even think I have a seatbelt on the back.
I'm just like, you know what, Like we're here, We're
gonna see where this takes us.
Speaker 1: Say, this is just crazy taxi.
Speaker 4: But he gets us, gets us to the ticket window
at like literally four thirty when it closes, and he
jumps out and goes to the ticket window and like,
I don't know what he said to them, but he
convinces them to sell us tickets. And so like we
barely got in and we bought these tickets and we
get up to the to the tram like the ski
lift tram, and they're like, oh, you gotta buy tickets
to the wall, And at that point all of us
are like, whatever, it's cheap, someone pay. We'll figure it
out later. And we get up on the wall. The
whole thing man, and this like thick, thick fog has
rolled in.
Speaker 2: So we're on the wall silent hill too straight.
Speaker 4: Up but you can't see off of it. We're up
there for like twenty thirty minutes, and then the officers
that oversee the area are like, oh, everyone has to
get off the wall. There's torrential rain coming. So we
had to walk down the wall like forty five minutes
in this thick fog.
Speaker 2: And they're like yelling at us at every turn, like
there's officers everywhere, they have batons. They're like, we don't
have time to really stop.
Speaker 4: No trying.
Speaker 1: Now, you don't know what you're saying, but you just
sort of Yeah, we inferred.
Speaker 2: From others that the rain was coming, and we were
also probably I really think we might have been like
the actual last group reached the wall, uh, and we
were told we're not gonna be able to ride the
lift down, which usually you do just ride the lift down.
We had to like actually hike down.
Speaker 4: To walk like fifth and.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's not like you're like, it's not and
it's it's stars basically like it's it's not stairs, but
it's it's so uneven and like you know, it's it's
five hundred years old, and like, yeah, sometimes you're going
up massive hills. Other times you're you're trying to walk
down and you're doing that fast walk shuffle where you
can't stop and you're like please don't fall, please don't fall.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And the whole time there's a dude behind us
who's just like laying on us to move forward. We
don't have time to stop or like taking the sights
because we have to keep moving forward.
Speaker 4: But we did meet and it's just guys from Saudi
Arabia that when we were got the taxi driver, they
were also trying to get up to the wall and
they somehow made it too, and so we talked to
them like, oh, yeah, we came. We came for a
day to see the wall and then we're going back
to study at Rai.
Speaker 2: Yeah, wild trip. And then we reached the end and
then at the bottom of the hill at the base
of the wallpart we were on the Bottling Wall is
like this really cool but spooky town. It's like, I
imagine it's very torsty. It's dark outside. Yeah, there's neon
lights and lots of cool stuff, but it was it
was dark and foggy and moody, and they had like
sirens going because of like incoming rain and time to
get out of the town and that kind of stuff,
and it was just crazy. They also had the KFC,
which I thought was funny, a cup of pictures of
KFC because it was.
Speaker 3: Like there when they built the wall actually exactly, Yeah.
Speaker 2: The kernel of the wall. Yeah and yeah, so it
was just like it was just wild. And then we
had to find a way to get back home, which
we did with a taxi or a d D or whatever.
And yeah, it was definitely the kind of the kind
of trip that my bosses, our bosses would like have
not if I would have told them as it's happening,
they would have been like, Wesley, you were not actually
allowed to do that. I mean, you were on a
work sanction trip. You were not going to go up
to a wall while there's flash floods ninety minutes into
the mountains. Do not do that, which is why I
did not tell my boss about this until after.
Speaker 4: But it all worked out in the end.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm on one hand, on one hand, I applaud
your go gitterness. I think that's great. On the other hand,
we got to work on your self preservation.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like, I'm I'm very happy that you guys
got to see it. But I do feel like forgetting
a neck car.
Speaker 4: If there weren't four of us, we wouldn't have done
some of these things, Like if I was by myself,
I would not have done most of that, right. Yeah,
But the fact that there was four of us we
gave us solidarity, especially when everyone was like, you know what, hell,
let's do it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you're like, yeah, four of us are harder to
mess with than what.
Speaker 1: No, we just learned basic stances, use those exactly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, walk, But yeah, that it was wild. It
was the wildest work, you know, because when we go
on work trips, it's fun to like, you try to
go and explore the area you're in if it's somewhere cool.
And that's definitely the most wild, risky adventure I've been
on outside of work hours. But it was worth it. It
was fun, it was really cool, and I'm glad I
got to see the wall. And now there's a very
crazy story that the four of us have.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, yes, you can keep an eye out for
our next unannounced issue of the magazine and you can
read Wesley's full Phantom Blade zero preview and then his
rendition of this wild story. It's a pivot much like
second to complete. Oh what that was?
Speaker 2: Hayes has a lot of good coverage already. Yes that
people should go check out. Yes, absolutely, go to inverse
dot com.
Speaker 1: Check that out. Man, the game I'm about to talk
about probably couldn't be any more different than Play zero.
But I played a very very cool little indie that
dropped a couple of weeks ago called and Roger. Have
you guys played or seen this game at all?
Speaker 3: I've heard of it. I know a lot of people
who's uh tasted opinions I respect in the industry have
been saying, play this game and don't learn anything more
about it, just go play it. Uh So I'm already
breaking one of those rules here now by being on
the podcast, but.
Speaker 1: I will avoid because this game is going to be
tricky to talk about in terms of the plot, because
kind of the mystery of the game is what is
actually happening here. So I'm gonna have to apologize if
I sound like I'm like talking around things, but like
the Yeah, so it's a kind of like a visual
novel se puzzle game that reminds me a lot of Florence.
Speaker 4: I was just Lawrence.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I love Florence, and I had to look
up to see if this is the same developer, just
because there's so many kind of like sort of the
game design. It's it's very similar in how they approach
sort of gamifying their like really like personal interactions sort
of the the base premise I can give without getting
into any spoiler territory is that you it follows a
young woman who is missing her father, and she comes
home one night and there is a man in her
house that she does not recognize and doesn't know what
his deal is, and the guy is very being very
insistent that they know each other, and there's some like
sinister overtone like what is happening here? Why is this
guy at like he knows me, I've never seen him,
and things sort of go from there. It's a very
short game, like you can easily finish it in an
hour if even it's just three chapters. And basically what
the game works is that it's got like a like
the way they sort of like every scene is sort
of its own playable vignette, and what I like about
the game a lot, excluding the story stuff, is how
they sort of take actions like walking around or sneaking
or even just like conversations and find really neat and
kind of bespoke mini games to play to accomplish these things.
Like there's a sequence where you're trying to sneak from
this guy and you're like trying to hide behind a couch,
and like I said, you're just it's pretty much like
a point and click game where it's like, Okay, here's
some footsteps on the ground. If you click the footsteps,
you'll move forward, but you're also trying to hide from
like his gas. You kind of have the time like Okay,
if I click these footsteps, I'll move like a certain amount,
and if he sees me, then it's you know, game over.
Or there's like, well, the game is really big on
it's sort of like clicking and dragging things in really
neat ways, Like there'll be like little a little button
that appears a lot and it'll be like, hey, just
drag this button, and then by dragging this button in
a bunch of wacky ways, maybe you'll sort of like
have a conversation with someone and based on sort of
the path that the no takes, it's sort of exemplifying
maybe the tone of the conversation. So if it's like
a very like maybe like tumultuous talk, the path that
the line takes reflects that, because it starts to get
a little bit more jagged or wacky, and it's just
sort of like in your mind you're like, oh, okay,
like just because it's not there's no spoken dialogue in
this game at all, So it's all about just using
the gameplay to sort of give you an idea of
like I think I know sort of contextually what the
emotion or tone is in this scene, and there are like,
you know, word bubbles, but there's just no voices and
the Florence comparison because Florence did that a lot, and
one of the things I like about the game where
it's like, oh, like, how do we sort of sell like, oh,
these two having a conversation, But it's very awkward where
there's like that cool minigame where you're trying to drag
the word bubbles into the little slots and at first
it can't fit because it's supposed to be like, oh
it's they don't really, it's awkward, they don't know what
to say to each other, but then as they get
easy with each other, the word bubble start fitting in.
It's a lot of that kind of stuff. Like there's
a really cool segment where you're trying to escape this
guy and you're trying to get through a door but
you don't. It's like a series of like, Okay, I
need a key and I need to turn it the
right way and I need to push through the door.
And to sort of like create that panic that would
come from that, there's like a bunch of different dots
on the screen and only one of them does what
you need to do, and you're just clicking through all
of them, and the ones that don't work just kind
of drop from the screen and you're just trying to
find the one that actually does the thing you're in too,
So you're like frantically clicking and you're like, I don't
know if he's like right behind me, and I don't
know how much time I may or may unhapp but
I need to find the right one. Or like you
have to remember certain sequences where it's like okay, I
need to brush my teeth, and again they give you
a bunch of dots, and it's like one of these
dots turned the faucet on, another one puts toothpaste on
the brush, and then another one, you know, does the
actual brushing. But they're moving around the screen and I
kind of have to try to keep track of which
one is which, and you have to do it in
the right order. So again, it's just like this is
supposed to be challenging to her for some reason, So
it's like effective in making you feel like this is
a really basic action and I cannot do it and
it's taking me a longer, and again I'm trying. It's
so hard to talk about this game without trying to
contextualize why things are like this. But again, that's one
of the draws of this game is like I think
it does a good job of like right off the bat,
you're intentionally supposed to be very confused about, like wait,
what is happening here. You'll jump through like things are
sort of told out of sequence, or like you'll jump
through differ diferent phases of this person's life, and so
you're trying to piece together like, Okay, this is happening
at this time, what does this mean? And I think
it does go a good job where like the first
chapter is supposed to intentionally be confusing, but by the
time you get to like midway through chapter two, at
least for me, I started to understand what was happening here.
And I think it does a good job of like
not dragging it all too long to where you just
feel lost the whole time. And I think when things
do start to become clear, I think it feels really rewarding.
And also even after finishing the game and I want
to go back and replay it, and I was hoping
to do it before this but just didn't have time.
It's like I got I'm pretty sure I got what
the game was going for. But even then I was
talking to my girlfriend who played it too, and we
were just sort of picking each other's brains, like do
you think this is what was actually happening? And I
think we're both pretty much right. But it is one
of those games that it's kind of fun to talk
to someone and say, like, what did you get out
of this? What do you think was happening with her
and the guy, and sort of like just the the
journey they went on, it's apology if this all sounds
very scattershot, because again, this is a very hard game
to talk about without being able to even even like
lightly get into, like any of the story revelations. I
think things start to kind of unravel once you do.
Speaker 3: I feel like every once in a while we get
a game like this Behind your Eyes or before your
Eyes Before your Eyes came to mind immediately as something
where that's also a game that you can probably be
in about an hour, ye and to tell you too
much beyond very very basic story setup, and even that
is kind of giving away some of the push and pull.
And I'm always I've made some enemies in the past
for my stance on I don't think we should be
as concerned about spoilers as people tend to get. But
in this case, it's not necessarily a spoiler so much
as like the actual journey that you go on. It's
important to inter it with an open mind, and to
inter itt with just kind of like being presented with
what's in front of you, the way that you crack
a book for the first time. Maybe you don't read
the back cover and you can just kind of let
the story take you from there. I think, especially with
the short game like this that can be really powerful
and impactful. I've really found that with story games Florence
Before Your Eyes Try to There was another one I
played recently that was also really really good. That was
a short story based game, and it's killing me that
I can't remember it. But even something that I would
consider like medium short, like What Remains of Edith Finch,
those can be really powerful sequences and really powerful little
games so immediately interesting those that might have been.
Speaker 4: Even something like Journey kind of falls into that, right
or like it's hard to properly describe the experience of
playing Journey without actually playing.
Speaker 1: It, And I think it also depends on like everyone's
reaction to it will be different, so sort of like
what I take away from it might be different than
what you guys might take away from it, just because
I interpreted like maybe a mini game or a certain
conversation a certain way, which will paint it in a
completely different light. So even like sharing what I would
think about it might not be indicative of maybe what
is actually going for. But yeah, like I think, like
I said, this is one of those games where I
think going into it relatively blind is better. Even the
Steam description doesn't really say much about it, like it
doesn't delve much beyond what I just said. So it's
only on Steam and Switch I played it on. It's
very much a point in clicking, like you primarily have
a cursor and then occasionally sometimes you'll hit the buttons controls.
Uh no, not on switch To. It's only on switch one,
like a switch one native game. So I played it
on switch To, and I had that thought of like, oh,
but I tried it. It didn't work, So I'd say, like,
you know, ideally, I guess you want to play does
the mouse but it's totally fine just using the joystick
to move the cursor around. It also does some like
some fun fourth wall breaking stuff where again I need
to play it again and see if there's anything to this.
But like a lot of the chapters, or all three
chapters start with you going through what would normally be
basic menu set up for a game of like hey,
change the lighting, make sure you know the symbol is
barely visible, or hey, are you sure you want to
use this language? Do you want to turn the volume up?
And they mess with that in a lot of really
cool ways that again I'm like, I, what why are
we doing this? And yeah, like when you first do it.
Initially I was like, okay, like this is legit, and
then things don't behave the way that you think they should.
Speaker 3: Uh, that is an all time thing to do in
a video game, imo, Paranormo syites if you never played it,
Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's got some really good
stuff in that department. Man your cell on this game.
Speaker 4: It's cool.
Speaker 1: I think every I like, I say, it's only like
five bucks too, it's pretty cheap. So yeah, was it in?
Speaker 2: Was an inscription that looked at your files on your
computer and like used images to like for something from
I thinking of a different game.
Speaker 3: It maybe would have been. I mean, that's that's Daniel
Mullens went to your Likeny Island did stuff like that
for sure.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I know A dokey doky Literature Club also did
that on the PC version, Like you had to go
into your say file, like your actual file folder to
do a thing.
Speaker 3: The hex from Daniel Mullens did that as well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, so cool. Yeah, it's cool. I want to
play it again. I would like to write a review
for it if I have time. But so you know,
TB D on that. But yeah, Ann Roger. It's out now.
Like I said, switch Switch one specifically, and much like
four ninety nine.
Speaker 3: Oh perfect, Yeah, that's perfect. I looked it up during that.
It's from Tiery Hands Studio, who I'd not heard of
me before.
Speaker 1: I think they have one other game that they made
call check Case Time from twenty twenty three. Not familiar
with it.
Speaker 3: But that sounds familiar. I feel like I might have
gotten press releases or something about it. But it's also
published other under a Kodansha, which is really interesting. I
forgot that they were doing some some publishing. So that's neat.
Speaker 1: Yeah, alrighty from a game that has already come out
to the Games on the Horizon. We're jumping to this
section of the show where we're going to run down
the release calendar for the rest of the year and
shout out our most anticipated games yet to come. I
believe we're just sticking within the calendar of twenty twenty
five year, which you know, there's plenty of stuff. I
love this because I love like in your head, because one,
there's so many cool stuff coming out, and also it
reminds me of how quickly this year feels like it's
gone by already or it's like, oh, we're already a
mid August, like we're already over halfway through this year,
which might be good.
Speaker 2: Before we before we jump into that, I want to
pop question, not pop question, pop quiz. I don't know
what it's for everybody. I want to know what, like
your your two biggest backclog games are right now before
we look ahead, what games are haunting you? For me,
it is uh Death Straining two, which I need to
play still, and probably Donkey Kong Binans even though it
just came out, but I can already tell that that's
it's gonna be.
Speaker 1: As so are these games we have games from started
at all, or stuff that we have started but haven't finished.
Speaker 2: Started but have been put on the back burner, games
you haven't started, whatever, the games that are haunting you
when you think about games coming up and games you
still need.
Speaker 3: To finish and from this year, yes, yeah, this year
we go my full backlog. There's my number one with
a bullet is Kingdomcome Deliverance too?
Speaker 1: That's the one I really need to sit down and plagues.
I know, like Wesley, you scored it like a nine
point five, right.
Speaker 2: That game is incredible and it's gonna go I don't
know if it's it's not like a sleeper hit this year,
but I can tell that a lot of people didn't
get around to it because it is truly an incredible,
like actual role playing game. Yeah, that I thoroughly, thoroughly loved.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like it's one that's gonna come up game of
the year. So it's like I need to absolutely get
to that. And also it just sounds cool. And then
the other one, I guess is I'm slowly chipping my
way through it, but it's been so hard except that
just been busy with either work, games or just life stuff.
But I'm crawling through Claire Obskier Expedition thirty three, which
is the other like goaty contender, like I am. If
you want to know where I'm at, Like I only
have four party members and I only recently got the
fourth one.
Speaker 2: Oh, got a lot of game going. Yeah, I mean
it's not that long of a game though, so like
that's definitely way more doable. Kingdom Come is like at
minimum sixty five hours. I'd say, Claire Obscurt, you can
roll on like thirty hours just mainlining probably what.
Speaker 4: About you Hayes Kingdom Come is definitely the big one
for me, partially because I'm like the big RPG guy,
you know, and that's like the one RPG of the
year I haven't played. But I also never beat the original,
and I stubbornly feel like I have to beat the
original before I play the second one. I know I
don't need to.
Speaker 1: Kyle is going to crash through your wall like the
kool Aid Man to yell at you and say, play
the new fun thing.
Speaker 4: The other one for me is South of Midnight, which
I know isn't that long. It's just like it's the
game that I keep thinking every time I get through
a review, I'll play it, and then I get another
review and I just I just don't have time. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I think I literally said this last week, but South
of Midnight is like my game of the year. Yeah,
so far with the bullet and I'm on to occur
in South of Midnight kick because I finally just watch Centers,
which is, you know, same vibe, and now I'm reading
Ring Shout, which is another same vibe book. Fantastic so far.
I just love like South Americana like literature like that,
like black literature is so good and South of Midnight
really is it's a treat.
Speaker 1: Yeah, good game. At least that one's like said, it's manageable,
like it's like, yeah, twelve to fifteen hours or so. Yeah.
Speaker 4: I think I'm gonna try after I get through the
August rush of reviews, let's try and ship back that one.
Speaker 3: Okay, but you Eric, I think for me this first
answer feels a little bit like cheating because it is
an old game that has been on my backlog forever
that just got an HD version, but Bravely Default I
would like to actually finish that one out. I've always
heard really good things about it from people who love RPGs,
love job systems and all that, so I am one
of those people. So you're remaster, yes, yeah, the Bravely
Default Flying Fairy HD whatever it's called. It's yeah, something
I figured there might have been like a remastered or
maybe like a storybook edition somewhere in there. I don't know,
but yeah, it's really good so far. I really enjoyed it,
and it just keeps being that game that I play
for a bit and then new game comes up and
I disappear, and then I have to come back and thankfully.
It has some pretty good mechanics for getting back into
the game, but I always kind of have to refresh
myself on everything I was doing and get back in.
And then the other one is Despelotte, which was a
soccer football depending on you know, where you come from,
a game about just kids playing soccer is my understanding.
Speaker 1: But it's like, so I play this, and that's also
a very short game, like an hour or two maybe,
but yeah, it's like set in Ecuador during the I
think like two thousand and one, and it's like, I
guess during that year that was like Ecuador had like
a crazy run in the World Cup that kind of
like ignite I did the country. I'm like, oh my god,
this is the best we've ever done. And it just
became this cultural moment and sort of like that's the
backdrop for this story of this kid that is like
really into two soccer slash football, and you're sort of
like living his daily life throughout one week, going through
his stuff. But that's kind of like everything of it's
kind of painted with the kind of hysteria of how like,
oh my god, we might get to a World Cup,
what does that mean for us?
Speaker 4: And it's really interestingly it's juxtaposed against really huge political
upheaval in the country too.
Speaker 1: Yes, so like.
Speaker 4: That's happening, but you're seeing it through the eyes of
like this big soccer event, because he's a kid and
that's what he cared about.
Speaker 3: There's another game that came out last year that was
also on my backlog that I still haven't got around
to you. I think it's called nineteen twenty one A
Deep Slumber or something like that, but it was it
was similarly a game that was about everyday life during
political upheaval. And I I always really like those kinds
of games. They're really fascinating, especially if they exposed me
to just a piece of history that I'm not personally
familiar with and like put me there. Like that's the
thing that games can do, right, is put me in
the middle of those things and helped me experience them
with context, with world understanding around it. So Desplote art
style alone already had me in. And then the idea
of incorporating culture, sports, place and culture all that kind
of stuff within a place of the world that I'm
not very familiar with all sounds fantastic. So that's that's
one that has been on my radar, and a good
friend and very good writer, Moys's Taveris wrote a great
piece on it over at Digital Trends if you want
to check that out, and basically sold me on, Yes,
I need to play this before the year's out. Alrighty, well,
now that we've set our picks, I'm gonna ask all
of you to find a knife because we're going to
make a blood pact that we're all going to finish
these games by the end of the year. Okay, just
very like Tom Tom sorry, Huckleberry Finn style. We have
to reconvene in December and see who is who was
finishes probably the easiest. Yeah, I My my tastes, as
I have learned, is that all of my games are
on one of two ends of the spectrum. I love
a good like eight hour or less game, and I
love a good sixty hour or more game, and everything
in between whatever wasted. You either got to put time
into this or just like you know, an evening or
two into this, and anything in between, like what are
we doing here? Which is weird. That's where clear Upscure
was kind of strange for me, where I was like, oh,
that was a moderately paced, nicely you know, measured out
game that felt weird to me, but I know I
look out in that way so bravely default. I don't
think it's two it's.
Speaker 1: A long.
Speaker 2: It can be.
Speaker 1: The end game gets pretty there's a twist in a
way that I didn't like. At the time.
Speaker 4: You think it's ending, and then it's like, oh, I
have twenty five more hours.
Speaker 3: Yeah, let me tell you I've played. I'm so familiar
with it. Yeah. I love a good Tales game ending
where it's like, oh, we're done. No, we're not, We're
not even close to done. What are you talking about?
And decided we should do that.
Speaker 1: Okay, Well with that in mind, well, uh, I guess
we'll maybe take turns going around a horn, just the
just shouting out some stuff, and you know, if there's
a if we say anything that anyone else also is
excited about, we'll sort of chime in. Since I'm the
captain of the ship, I will start as offt And
it's a game that comes out pretty soon at the
end of the month. And I don't know if I'm
necessarily as much excited about this game as I am
just extremely curious about it because it's been, it's been,
it was now so long ago, but it's a lost
soul aside.
Speaker 4: That was my first yeah yeah, So.
Speaker 1: It comes out August twenty ninth. For those that don't
notice game, it's what we would call like it was
like weird Devil May Cry Final Fantasy fifteen, where the
protagonist looked almost suspiciously like knock this, like legally distinct
knocked this. And this was originally developed by one guy
in China and it was supposed to be for PS four.
So this is how long ago this was announced, because
I don't think the PS five I need to be
announced yet. And apparently the story was that he was
making this game by himself in his old time, put
out a trailer that looked extremely impressive, especially for a
one person studio, and it caught the attention of Sony,
who then reached out and basically formally took on the
game as a publisher. And I believe he has since
kind of like been given a team or recruited a team,
but it's not just him anymore. And it was one
of those games where you would hear about it once
in a while with a new trailer and then it
would disappear for like a couple of years, and he'd
be like, whatever happened to that game? And then out
of nowhere, it would resurface with a new trailer and
they're like, man, look out as based his action is
and this guy has like a weird floating like crystal
dragon buddy that helps him out in combat. I still
don't know what is actually happening story wise, it just
but as a stylish action Sikoh, I'm like, yeah, this
is this is the stuff. I like, this looks cool. Hope.
Speaker 4: I actually followed this game very closely over the years,
and funny enough, it was directly inspired by the trailers
for Final Fantasy fifteen, because I remember following the developer
Yang Bing when he announced it and he said, like,
I watched the trailer's Final Fantasy fifteen and I wanted
to make a game, and so that was kind of
the basis for it. And then he got signed onto
the chiny Hero Project and founded Ulta zero Games. And
I'm fascinated to see what that game even is because
it's very Final Fantasy inspired and very Devil May Cry inspired.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was supposed to come out earlier this year,
but it got one last delay into its current date
of August twenty nine. It's like, I like to think
it's close enough now where it can't possibly be delayed again,
but stranger things have happened. But yeah, I just want
to see what just what is this like? Is it
good as like well the years of development kind of
show will it feel like a game from its time
or will it kind of will it post a genre
forward in any interesting ways? But uh, yeah, that's that's
my first one. How about us?
Speaker 2: I'm gonna go with Final Fantasy Tactics the Evilist Chronicles.
It's tactics, it's you know, you know and love it.
It's a blow up game, and I'm very excited for
Square to finally be doing something with it. I fall
on the side where it's not like exactly what I
wanted necessary remake. Yeah, I actually kind of wanted an
HD two D remake, which is like you know, old news.
At this point, it's every game Squaren makes I want
an HG two D remake of and I'm not like
super sold on the like visual changes necessarily, but there
is the old still play, like the old classic way.
I just hate that you have to do the new
art to get all the new uh like features in
the vo and stuff. I wish I was like a
button you could turn the art on and off. Sure
that said, I mean these games are great and I'm
excited to play them again on like modern consoles. There's
not much to it. I just love Final Fantasy, I
love tactics and take anything. I need people to show
up and support this game, even if you don't have
any interest in playing it. Please for us for the
tactics siccos please we need more.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Do you think they'll do DS games? Anyone talks
about like A two and stuff?
Speaker 3: Oh? I love A too, I hope.
Speaker 4: So I just played through A two like I beat
it a week ago.
Speaker 1: Oh they won't.
Speaker 2: They probably won't, I hope.
Speaker 3: So I would like to.
Speaker 4: They did say in my interview the director said, my hero.
He said that they want to make more tactics games
and they think it's viable. But it all largely depend
on how this remaster does. Enthusiasm behind it.
Speaker 2: Will this game reach square Enix sales?
Speaker 4: Expit exactly? They have to prove.
Speaker 1: So I guess we're not getting one. Then I guess.
Speaker 3: I have a feeling that if we were to get
more tactics from just from Square in general, they'd probably
sooner return to the well of Triangle Strategy or do
something with Asano versus this project. But I would love
to be proven wrong. I am always happy to be
proven wrong. I just I need this to happen so
that way the Tactics ups well continues, and eventually Atlas
will have to remake. Should make me tense, a Devil
survivor one of the greatest tactics games ever made. It
has to happen. You're running out of games to remaster Atlas.
Speaker 1: I know you are.
Speaker 3: I'm keeping it tally, how.
Speaker 1: About you, Hayes.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so Tactics would have been my pick, But my
other pick is actually Trails in the Sky first after
another remoke. I am, as Eric knows, I'm a huge
Trail sicco and it's it's a series that's hard to
tell people to get into because there's ten games and
they're all one hundred hours long, and it's like it's
worth it. It is worth it.
Speaker 1: But yes, former editor and RPG enthusiast Kim Wallace, I
would talk to her because she was a big Trails
person and would be like swear By like, it's one
of the best, like low key series out there. You
should get into it. But also it's not the easiest
thing to get into. Is there's so many one.
Speaker 4: Of the best stories in video games, hands down, But
that's what you say. First Chapter is going to finally
give people like a full remake of the first game
and a really good entry point because the first one
is you know, I still love the first Trails in
the Sky, but it is dated. It is clearly dated.
So I think Falcom has come a very long way
since then and integrating a lot of the lessons they've
learned and updates, and they're really surprisingly league or just
animation that they have now. I'm just I'm so excited.
It's it's an all timer of a story. That game
made me cry multiple times, and I will probably cry
again in the remake, I'm sure.
Speaker 1: Okay, So this is the safe like I can if
I want to get into the city.
Speaker 4: This is where you start the place. There is now
a definitive.
Speaker 2: How many games this is it?
Speaker 4: You play this game?
Speaker 2: How many games after this remake do I need to
play to be caught up?
Speaker 4: Oh my gosh, there's two. There's two Sky games. The
crossbel Game.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the Sky, Well, no, there's three Sky games, right,
it's it's.
Speaker 4: FC SC and third I'm saying after.
Speaker 3: Oh, after that yeah, so two so three in the
Sky Chapter four and Cold Steel yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and then there's Reverie Steel.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 4: Then there's two Daybreak games.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, twelve.
Speaker 4: So if you want to be updated for Trails through
the Horizon when it comes out in January, you need
to play twelve games.
Speaker 2: That's that. Ten and one that looks like Forbidden West.
Speaker 3: Took me a second, but I got there.
Speaker 1: I got there. It's legend. I've always wondered this because
it's the same developer. Legend of Heroes. That's its own thing, right, Yes,
that's not okay. They don't intersect with each other at
all or anything like that. That's its own.
Speaker 4: Legend of Heroes is like the franchise, and Trails is
the sub series.
Speaker 1: What happened?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: I see, but back right now.
Speaker 4: To be quite honest, none of the games before Trails
are really that worth playing.
Speaker 3: So some of the older heroes are kind of very
like they show their age, but you know, there's there's
something to be found.
Speaker 4: I do wish they would like update them in some
way because they had awful localizations. That's that's the one problem.
Speaker 1: We'll wait for another another big remake those Eric, How
about you?
Speaker 3: So I have like two games that would put is
my my top two for this year right now, we've
had a very RPG stacked go around right now. Uh
So I will move my like one point two five
down and do my number one with the Bullet. Because
I talked earlier about games I love on the spectrum.
I love like smaller our count or large hour count,
and I'm not sure there are many games I've put
more hours into, at least single player wise, more than
Slay the Spire. So Slay the Spire too, which is
currently set for an ambiguous twenty twenty five date if
it does come out this year, is going to be
my number one. The Bullet. I love the first slave
Slay the Spire. I think it is the best deck
builder out there. I think if you want to understand
deck builder, roguelikes just the design space in general, Slay
the Spire is a foundational text in that regard, and
the idea of doing a sequel, I imagine is daunting
for the team at megacrit But I cannot wait to
see what they do with it. I think there's so
much space to explore that has been explored already by
fan mods and additions to the game, the addition of
the Watcher and stuff like that. But I love Slay
the Spire. I just I don't think there's many other
games out there that can match it. And there's so
many games that have tried to do what Slay the
Spire does and just end up showing how masterful Slay
the Spire is as a game. It's hard to like
talk it up because it's ultimately just you're climbing a tower,
you're finding enemies or making choices on a branching path.
But the simplicity begets the like just depth of how
much you can do, how challenging it can be, how
much it makes you think about all the decisions decisions
you're making and the bill crafting you're doing on the fly.
It's it's a wonderful game. So yeah, I want Slay
the Spy or two to come out and just wreck me,
just mess me up and just ruin all future plans.
Speaker 1: Okay, I guess for my next one. Man, this is
tough because I'm like scrolling down some you know what
I'm gonna go with, Mortal Kombat Legacy Collection. I'm combat fan.
It's my favorite fighting game series, and it's one of
my favorite franchises just in general. I've been playing it's
literally since the first game hit arcades, and I've played
all of them, even the crappy spinoff adventure games. Anything
Mortal Kombat. I'm just want to get my hands on it.
I love this idea of just bundling a lot of
the old games and a lot of even tho the
obscure handheld games, which I've never played those into one package.
This is by Digital Eclipse. This is like, it's not
technically part of the gold Man series, like the making
of Karatka and Lamas off the Jeff Mencher story, but
it's it's in that vein because it's got the interactive documentary,
which I'm excited to watch. It's got like Ed Boone
and John Tobias back together, which was pretty wild to see,
and then talking to some of the live action actors
from like the first three Mortal Kombat games. It just
going through the history of the series, but it's bundling
MK one through four multiple versions of them from the
arcade versions to like you know, Superintendo Genesis, PS one,
you know sixty four. Most recently, they announced that MK trilogy,
which is my might be my favorite two D Mortal
Kombat from net era, like it's to me it's the
best version of three and it was probably my peak
of like fandom during at least the nineties, as well
as like GBA games like the like Deadly Alliance for
gbas in there, which is crazy and apparently we still
don't even know what the full pack it is because
I interviewed someone from Digital Clips during Summer Games Fest
and ats like, oh, no, we haven't announced everything that's
in here, which was evidence because they announced trilogy after that.
So I did ask them explicitly, like are any of
the adventure games in here, like Mythology, sub Zero or
Special Forces? And he kind of gave me a KOI
like maybe, you know. So it's like I would love
to have those. Those are terrible games, but I would
love to have like a modern way to play them.
So yeah, just as a Mortal Kombat sicko, I think
that's it's such a cool idea for a bundle, and
I'm super excited to see what that full lineup of
games looks like.
Speaker 3: Yes, I thought that crashed seconds. That's really weird but
well timed.
Speaker 2: Speaking of crashes, my next most anticipated game is Garfield
to Garfield Cart two.
Speaker 4: All you Can Drift.
Speaker 2: I'm a I'm not, I'm not excited.
Speaker 1: They were like, well, this must mean something to him.
Speaker 4: I know.
Speaker 2: It's like I could probably go into this and they'll
they'll take it.
Speaker 4: If you have some emotional connection to Garfield, I'd buy it.
Speaker 2: I'm a big Garfield guy. No, I'm actually gonna go
with the game that I bet has a lot of
people have not heard of, which is great because that
I want to inform people of it. We are game performers.
It's called Blood Thief. I have a ride up on
it on an upcoming feature because I spoke to the
dev behind it and it is my favorite game of
the recent Steam Next Fest back in June. It is
a p S one esque like Neon White type game.
I don't know what you want to call those, but
like the first person, ultra fast, ultra kill like runner
type games, but it's set in like dungeons and medieval
medievals is the easy way to say it. But for me,
the demo takes place on a lot of rooftops, so
it was very It reminded me a lot of Brandon
Sanderson's Misborn series, which tragically does not have any video
game about it and should. It is a hyper fast
first person game where you just need to advance through
anyone that's in front of you, and it's like a
one hit, one kill type situation. And what that means
is every speed run through a level, because it is
basically speed running, similar to like Neon White, is actually
like a puzzle and finding the optimum route through a level,
whether that's like you know, kicking this guy and then
dive sliding forward so that you can launch up and
then teleport to this guy, knife him and continue. And
the cool thing about it, like the fun twist, is
that your health is constantly depleting your blood which powers
your moves as well, so in a very doomsque way,
you can't like hold back. You need to get in
there to survive. You need to like get up in
front with the action and kill and it's just so
so good. The demos of on Steam right now. I
urge anybody interested in these types of games to try
it out. But it's coming later this year, and it
is far and away my favorite game I've played on
Steam next Fest and it's one I'm like continually excited for.
It is so good and that the visual style is
really cool. I can't emphasize how PS one it looks.
Speaker 1: It's awesome. Yeah, the game, what's cool is a demo?
Still love like the people.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a it's a it's a public demo, and
and the dev told me that it's like the last demo,
so like it's the most it's the final demo for
the game, so it'll be the most like true representation
of what to expect because he's been very public about
the game's development since, you know, years back, putting out
like pieces of the game for people to try and
tweak and and yeah, very excited.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah the game. That's super COOLO excited for that. Hayes.
Speaker 4: Yeah. I think my second one's got to be Mina
the Hollower Yacht Club's new game, the Shovel Night developers.
Shovel Knight to me is like one of those like
Mount Rushmore of indie games kind of game, and Miana
the Hollower just looks and I played the demo too,
and it's just fantastic. It's like their take it's almost
like their take on like a traditional Zelda, right, but
they've integrated so many interesting mechanics where you have like
you have a whip like in Castlevania, and you have
the HP restoration system like in Bloodborne, where you attack
to gain HP back, and you have that dig mechanic
where you can go underground and pop back out, and
there's just so many interesting things happening in that game.
Not to mention like the art style really evokes like
those GBA Zelda games, and I just I love how
it looks. I love the soundtrack is incredible. I so far,
I love everything about it. It's one of those few
games that, like, even before I played the demo, I
could look at trailers and be like, that's probably gonna
be in my top five games of the year. I
don't usually say that about a game beforehand without having
played it, but this is the one that I'm like,
this looks so much like my jam in every single
imaginable way.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I really. I played the Switch demo that they
released like a week or two ago last week. Yeah,
and yeah, I had a blast with it. Also, it
just looks nice on like a big switch to screen,
which it was pretty treat but yeah, yeah, pretty much
echoing everything you said, like I love how Zelda it
is and also a little bit of Castlevania and there
just maybe like the sub weapons stuff reminds me of Castlevania,
but like digging around stuff, like there's some cool like
environmental puzzles and like obstacles that seem to be designed
around it.
Speaker 4: I think it's nice to like because you see a
lot of games that are like inspired by two D Selda,
but you don't see a lot that try and do
something like genuinely really unique with that that format.
Speaker 2: We have a really good documentary on our YouTube channel
shop about having the followers creation. Two cool things about
the game and the documentary is it was like a
side project or like a solo project that someone of
the studio was working on and now Yacht Club Yeah
saw it and they were like, Yo, this is so cool.
We're going to make this our next game, which is
very exciting. And something really exciting to me is like
you said, hey, Shovel Knight is like it's so good.
It's I feel like it's kind of behind the renaissance
of indie that started back in like, you know, ten
years ago now, but they haven't put out a game
real well, they've put out some you know, new stuff. Yeah,
and like I'm so excited to see what Yacht Club
has taken from the landscape in the past decade. Like
they were looking, they were watching, they were seeing what
games were doing, Like what what have they taken from
the past ten years of game development and created with
mina super exciting, awesome.
Speaker 1: Eric back to you.
Speaker 3: My number. My close runner up was Octopath Travelers zero.
Octopath Traveler too, is one of the most underrated RPGs
the last five ten years. Easy. I think anybody who
is going like turn based is back because Claire Obscure
is like, you need to play Octopath. You need to
go play Octopath. Trust me on this. It's I was
not a huge fan of Octopath Traveler one. I've said
as much. I thought it was an okay game that
had some neat ideas, but ultimately didn't really live up
to its concept or some of the things it was
drawing on. Oxopath Traveler who solved all that and then
some with its path actions, with its storytelling, with the
character writing, individual characters that I think are some of
the best RPG party members in any RPG. Again, like
in recent memory, characters like Partiitio and Castie and Temenos
are just so incredible. I love Oswald, the bulky Black Mage.
I love that we get like a bear black mage
who just like got buff and he got jail body
and then just came out and started casting spells. I
love that for him. And so take all that. Now
you've got Octabath Travelers, which seems to be kind of
a reconstitution of ideas and stuff from Champions of the Continent,
which was the Octapath Traveler mobile game. It seems like
they're Square isn't being super upfront about what is being
reused versus what is new outside of a few new
features and mechanics, but it seems like it is repurposing
some aspect of that into something new, which I think
sets a really cool precedent for Square. I would love
to see Near Reincarnation come back in some way because
that's kind of a really big entry in the Near
series when it comes to the lore and it being
gone sucks.
Speaker 4: So some really good stories in it too.
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, yeah, My former colleague and freelance writer Timothy
Mamblo has been posting a lot about it because he
is also an Octopath sicko and has done a lot
of writing about it, so URGI to check that out.
But it's I just love Octapath Traveler like like two
completely one meo. I already loved the style of one,
and it was the some of the other stuff that
just didn't hit for me, But with two it felt
like it came into its own and now Octopath Traveler
zero seems like it's really doing some cool stuff with
the concepts and the ideas of Octpath Traveler as a whole.
Just a very classic, feeling, forward thinking RPG that seems
really exciting, and I would almost dovetail this into this
is a twenty twenty six game, but it also then
gets me excited for Adventures of Elliott, which seems like
it's going to be very good from what little I've
played so far. We want to talk about Zelda games
that feel like they're evolving and moving forward, but that's
that's a twenty six game. That's a different story. Talked
about Traveler zero.
Speaker 1: Play that demo. You should play the demo.
Speaker 3: It's a cool demo.
Speaker 4: I think it's interesting with those demos.
Speaker 2: How do you feel about Zero?
Speaker 4: Oh? God, that I was just saying. I think it's
interesting with those demos that team Asano does that they
every demo they do, they take a bunch of feedback
and like directly say like, hey, we want your feedback
and we want to use it in the game.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they've they've been really good about that. I remember
that specifically with Triangle Strategy there were like specific changes
that were made from demo to final game that I
think bore out very well. Yeah, Asana has been on
top of it lately. Wes, what were you asking?
Speaker 2: How do you feel about Zero? You make your own protagonists.
Speaker 3: In it, which is interesting.
Speaker 2: It's an interesting change for Octopath and the storytelling they do.
How do you think that's going to fare out?
Speaker 3: I think this is me assuming because one of the
shots that we see in the trailer for Zero shows
a bunch of characters, some of whom look a lot
like characters we've seen an Octopath traveler already kind of
joining banding together in some big fight and spoilers, I
guess for some Mechanics and Ocpath travelers sometimes there are
big fights that involve the party, like the and I
think the way that game plays with party size has
always been really interesting, the way that you can do
kind of different runs. You recruit your characters and put
them together in whatever order you want. Theoretically, you could
beat the game with just one character if you really
wanted to, or you could go through and get everybody
and stuff like that. So I think the ways in
which they're doing that. Having the created character might not
fully realize the whole eight stories coming together in the
way that Octabath Traveler one and two did, but might
open them up to other storytelling avenues and also might
kind of solve problems they would have run into bringing
in new stuff from both what they're making now and
what they're trying to incorporate from Champions of the Continent.
It's probably just something that might make life a little
bit easier, and if it does that, then it does that.
I think it's cool. I don't really dislike created characters.
I think the only thing I run into is when
they feel like they're just kind of there as a
placeholder for for you as a person, Like we needed
some sort of body to put in here, and we
didn't design a character or viewpoint or framing around it.
So we just have here's Billy. You know, he's he's
he's you. Essentially, I'm interested to see that. Yeah you
know who's not Billy. But yeah, Traveler Zero I think
looks really good and is also really soon. I think
that was the surprise of that showcase was early. Yeah, yeah,
that's that turned around fast, So I'm looking forward to that.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that's for my next game. I'm going to
swing for defenses here. You know what, you love it.
It's Metroid Prime for I believe. I believe it's coming
out this year. I don't think it's getting delayed. I
know it's a point of contention with our friend's over
a giant bomb, but I'm in the camp that the
game is going to come out this year. I don't think.
I don't think I can slip again, honestly, because I
don't know what else Nintendo would have for the holiday,
which is when I presume it's gonna be coming out
at this point, maybe like a September and October well
probably does well. I don't know. Nintendo's weird they surprise us,
but like, yeah, it's coming out next month. Surprise, but
whenever it comes out, I'm gonna play the hell out
of it. I love Metroid, I love Metroid Prime. I
think Prime one particularly it's one of my favorite games ever,
and I think it's like viz for maybe the best
Metroid game with Super Metroid for me. Everything i've seen
A four looks awesome. The like new Psychic Power stuff
looks cool. I want to mess around with the mouse controls.
I've not gotten to plate it at all. I haven't
been on those preview beats for it, so I've just
had to live vicariously through our peers as they talk
about it. But it just looks like it looks it's
just what I want. It's like, yeah, that's a new
Metroid Prime game that looks nicer and runs at like
one hundred and twenty fps. Apparently that's sweet. Give it
to me. Like that's one of those games where it's
like a seems I have just don't talk to me
because I'm just gonna want to play it is like
leave me alone. So yes, fingers crossed that we get
a date soon. I just I want it.
Speaker 2: My next game is kind of not cop Out but
Drastic World Evolution three I'm not actually excited to play it.
But my nephew, who is nine, loves these games. They're
the first games he's somehow the first games he like
rolled credits on and beat his Drastic World Evolution two,
went back and played. One loves these games. Is so obsessed,
like it was a big deal when they announced this,
Like we I met up with him and we watched
the trailer together. He's so excited about dinosaurs. He can
name every single dinosaur on screen without even like needing
to be told. He's like a dinosaur fiend. And he's
somehow really good at Drastic World Evolution, which are like
not easy games, especially for nine year olds. I play strategy, Yeah,
they're tough. Yeah, And I just it's it's really cool.
This will be the first because two he played like
after the fact, this will be like the first new
game where like we get to go and hang out
on release day and like play it and I get
to watch them and I can't wait. I think it's
going to be so cool, and it actually it does
look pretty cool. I mean, I like dinosaurs. It's hard
not to be excited about dinosaurs.
Speaker 1: Frank, are you worried though, that your nephew is slowly
turning into John Hammond.
Speaker 2: He might be, but he I don't know. He has well,
John Hammond loved dinosaurs too, and my nephew has like
a very a deep love for animals, Like he doesn't
like when people squish bugs, he doesn't like animals being
hurt or anything.
Speaker 1: Like.
Speaker 2: He really really loves like nature and stuff and wants
to be a zoo keeper and like. So I'm hoping
that he he stays on the path of the true
and not the Hopefully capitalism doesn't get in.
Speaker 1: There he falls into a bunch of money. Then yes, yeah,
it's like I can play this game for real. Now,
all right, what do you have for your third Yeah?
Speaker 4: My third game, strangely a tactics RPG heavy section, is
a Demon School.
Speaker 3: Oh you stole my game.
Speaker 4: I'm a huge tactical RPG siko. But I also think
Demon School looks really interesting because I love the social
simulation of persona, right, I don't love that A lot
of games have tried to do that and do it
really poorly. So one of the things I'm always looking
for is when a game tries to do social simulation
in a really interesting way. I think My favorite is
Fire a Month three Houses, because it kind of inverts
it with you being the professor and your train and
your students, and it kind of was like a fun
inversion of Persona and Demon School. I think looks like
it could be kind of like one of those interesting
takes on social simulation and school life and stuff like that.
And the art style looks impeccable too. I'm hopeful. I'm
just I'm honestly hopeful that it's going to be like
one of the breakout hits of the year.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I played it at the mix during SGF and
I really had a good time. It's one of those
games I'd kept an eye on for like God, it
felt like that games is floating around for years now,
but SGF was the first time I'd gotten to go
hands on with it, and I was really impressed because
I like tax this game too, but it had a
bit of specifically into the breach and just because of
like the enemy is kind of like telegraphing their attacks
and you kind of have to plan around that, Like
you're pretty much just like plotting turns and then just
hitting the play button and seeing how things go and
seeing if you planned everything the way that you thought
you did, which I was a huge into the Breach fan,
so it was it was clicking those boxes for me
of like, oh okay, it's one of these. I like that.
Speaker 3: And yeah with the cool art direction like you mentioned before. Yeah,
I'm really excited about this. This is going to be
like perfect Switch game when it comes out. Yeah, all right, Eric,
what is your third I'm still mad. My Demon School
was much very good. Who could have guessed?
Speaker 4: Now?
Speaker 3: With that in mind, I huh, this is interesting. I'm
gonna float maybe one that bends the rules a little bit.
And this isn't so much as I think this is
going to be a Grand Slam. I just want to
see how this pans out. I want to see if
this becomes a ripple change or not in the genre
that it releases in. Uh two x KO is supposed
to hit some sort of open, closed beta access thing
this year. It seems like the release Cadence is hewing
towards what they did with Valerie, what Riot Games did
with Valerie.
Speaker 1: This is the Riot Games fighting game.
Speaker 3: That's the League of Legends fighting game. What was the
original name Project L like Project L, which I hate,
that was a better name I two x KO sounds
like you're going to go play NBA too ka.
Speaker 1: I've been saying this.
Speaker 3: I'm like, Yo, you want to go play some two
x KO. I'm like, that's a weird way to pronounce
NBA two K but yeah, let's go the like no,
we're playing League of Legends, And I was like, oh, okay,
Project Dell makes it sound like it's an underground fight
club type thing, like there's there's a bit more of
a vibe to it.
Speaker 1: I am sure. Have you tried pronouncing it twice co
and saying I feel like that better?
Speaker 3: No, I don't like TwixT code.
Speaker 4: That sounds like like a K pop.
Speaker 3: Band two times knockout. That's would just call it by
its full name extended.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I'm really interested in two x KO because I
think it's taking a really different approach to fighting games.
It's a two on two tag fighter, It's from a
team that knows fighting games. It's got rollback neck code
from the jump, which most most fighting games do nowadays.
I feel like the the the era of convincing fighting
game developers that like rollback net code is a good
thing has finally ended and we are now living in
the blissful glory days. The golden hour of everything has
rollback net code now we finally accepted that we need
good online to play fighting games. But character wise, I've
played some of the previous open beta or open alphas
or whatever that they've had, and it's a really interesting
game coming from somebody who really likes tag fighters. I
grew up playing Marvel versus Capcom two on both the
Arcades and then on Xbox three sixty when that port
came over there. I love Dragon Ball Fighters when it
came out. Stuff like techn tag tournament has always been
big for me. King of Fighters has been really big
for me, even though that's not like a tag fighter,
that's like a sequence fighter. I don't know what you
want to call it. Capcom versus S and K two
another game in that style, But any sort of team
based fighting game has always been very appealing to me.
So I love the idea of League of Legends careters
because I'm also a League player getting involved in this
kind of stuff. What I'm kind of iffy on is
their initial launch model, which which seems a little bit sparse.
Ten fighters I believe at launch. Via is the most
recently confirmed one and closed out the starting roster. And
also some of the animations can vary wildly. They're the
VI level three super was getting some response on social media.
I wouldn't be surprised to see that one maybe tuned
a little bit later, because it's one of those ones
where if I'm VI doing the super, it's like ah
ah ah, and like the opponent is like off screen
then you can't see them at all, and they're just
kind of like yeah, yeah, yeah, where's There are other
super animations in that game that look fantastic. I love
Allowey's with the big monster consuming the character. I love
Broms where the poros roll in and attack. Like there's
some really good stuff in there. So but that being said,
League of Legends is a universe that, as Arcane showed
and as games like The Ruined King showed, there's a
lot to explore here. There's really great characters, really great designs,
really cool world building stuff that I think is like
ripe for exploration, especially within the bounds of a fighting game.
And I can't imagine not just getting tons of awesome
cool designs with everything from kind of your conventional fighters,
like you know, a set or a riven to characters like,
you know, what would Shako look like in a fighting game?
What would Timo look like in a fighting game? What
would Malzahar look like in a fighting game? I think
you can do some really cool stuff like that, so
I'm really interested in it. I also have to blame
Alex Manikin for getting me back into League of Legends.
He did this to me in twenty twenty five, the
year of Luigi.
Speaker 2: Twenty that's almost criminal. We need to have a talk
with them.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, it's it's bad friends, right, he knows, he
knows this about me. He was like, you won't play
a League of Legends and I was like.
Speaker 1: All right, and here we go.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, but no, it's it's cool and I like
that that riot is expanding beyond the Mobay. They've been
trying so much stuff, and I feel like Tea fight
tactics really good. There've been some other stuff that they've
tried that seems to have varied. I love the single
player stuff in Legends of run Tara, their deck game,
but it feels like they're still kind of waiting for
the next thing that takes off at the level of
League of Legends. Maybe two x KO is it? Maybe not,
who's to say, but I could see this being a
big game and potentially having a big tournament at EVO
next year and stuff like that if things go well.
So the closed launch of two x KO is my
game number three.
Speaker 1: Okay, we'll do one more round here before we wrap
up the show, so make it count and you can
do this too. But before I say my final game,
I'm gonna just quickly shout out some honorable mentions. A
ghost of Yote excited for that keeper double Find's next game,
Love double Find, very interested in that game. Me know,
the Hollow Words one we talked about before, and then
stuff like out of Worlds two. Want to play that
Silent Hill f which you know I talked about in
the show before. But the last game I'm gonna choose
as my most anticipated game for twenty twenty five is
Ninja Guiden four. Love Me Some Ninja Guiden. As I
mentioned when we were talking about Fantom played zero. I
am a stylish action just fanatic, and I played this
at Summer Games Fest, and out of all the games
I played there, this was the only one where I
was genuinely bummed that I had to stop playing. Like
even sometimes when you go to events like this, if
it's something I'm having fun with, when they call time,
I'm just like, well, okay, you know, I can wait
for you know, when it's supposed to come out. This
is one where I was like so locked in. It
was like just as a Ninja Guiden fan, where I
it's just like literally like the room melted away. It's
like nothing exists in here. I'm just going in here
as this little shaggy hair Ninja's you play a new
guy nim Yakimo and you're just tearing through dudes and
everything looks super nice, and I'm just like, yeah, this
is this is gaming right here. And also that is
it's just a cool meeting of minds because this is
developed by primarily by Platinum Games, with Team Ninja the
series developer sort of like overseeing it. And it's like,
oh again, as a fan of the genre, just couldn't
be better. Like I love Platinum's work. I'm a huge
Bandeta guy, love Metalview Rising, Team Ninja again, I love
the three D Ninja Guidans and Neo and all their stuff.
So it's just like, oh, this is a dream come
true for me and what's cool about the game is
that it is simultaneously like it feels faithful to Ninja
Guide in a way where like, if you didn't know
Platinum was on this, you probably wouldn't immediately guess it
because it behaves the way if you're a fan of
this game you would want. But as a fan of Platinum,
I can see the Platinum touches and just sort of
the the influences, like it's got the middle Gear Rising
Perry system, which is like pretty sweet. Yeah yeah yeah,
and then just other little like additions that they've added
to the game where it's like, oh, this this is
just this is peanut butter and jelly basically. Yeah. It's
like I don't really have much more to add other
than like it's just fun as hell. Like I like
I said, I played for like what was that like
thirty minutes I think we did, and I was just
like yeah, like nothing mattered again, like I said, it's
like this is just so much fun. So I'm super psyched.
I think this is and it's not too far away.
It's like end of September. I think it's pretty cool.
Early October, somewhere in October something like that. I might
be wrong.
Speaker 2: October twentieth.
Speaker 1: Okay, so maybe it's further away than I thought. But anyway,
it is my Halloween treat. That my my pre Halloween
treat will be Ninja Gag four.
Speaker 2: There's still plenty of time to play Rage Bound as.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm like halfway through that game is super fun.
And there's also that that Ninja Gay in Black or
Nina Too Black they came out earlier this year, which
was a really good remaster.
Speaker 2: If they came mm hmm, okay for my last game,
I'll do some honorable mentions Pokemon Legends z through A
Uh mostly just excited to see how that pans out.
I as boring as it is, like that performance needs
to work on that game. I will like that game
will ride or die for me on performance, which is
a very lame way to talk about games, but like
that's the state of Pokemon. I'm like, yes, yeah, I'm
also way more interested in than Arcius because I'm I
like a city environment over like a open world, you know,
rural environment any day, and the fact that it's set
like exclusively in Lumios is really cool. I think the
z through A tournament is a cool idea. And I
like that it's pretty drastic of a sequel in terms
of changes compaired Darcy. I think it's a really cool
thing for them to do, to change so much, even
though Arcis was like well received, ball x Pitvolver Digital's
big game coming this year. I think everyone needs to
play the demo. It's it's a roguelike brick breaker, and
it is as obsessive as it sounds. It's really really good. Yes,
And I know it's just the I'm same and it's
like just the demo. But my actual last game was
one that you already mentioned, Marcus and your little honorable mentions,
Ghost of Yote. You know, it's the easy answer. YouTube committers,
don't worry. We said it. I'm talking about it. You
don't delete the comment that says.
Speaker 1: Talking about it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Ghost of Sushima is awesome, obviously, you know, it's
an old book. At this point, like I'm excited for
this sequel. I think what I'm most excited for is
so Ghost of Sushima was up against the open world
formula like that. That's kind of what it was tacked going,
was the tired formula that Ubisoft had kind of distilled
open world games into and I think it did a
really good job of changing that up and giving us
something different. Ghosts of Yota is cool because it's now
it's competing against itself as well. Like I'm I'm less
interested in how sucker Punch is going to break the
open world formula. They already did a really good job
with that with Sushima. Now I'm interested to see, like,
is Yota going to feel familiar and too familiar, too
repetitive and like because it's more Sushiamo, or are they
going to be doing something bigger, something grander, something different
to its open world to like distinguish itself in this series,
Because I'm honestly not in the mood for more like
Ghost of Sushi mood in terms of like what that
game is. It was. I really liked that game and
what didn't like blow my socks off, but I enjoyed it.
I don't necessarily just want another forty hour adventure of
that that is with just a different protagonist. I'm excited
to see what Sucker Punch took from games in the
last five years and they are going to do to
this formula to keep it interesting and why it warrants
a sequel That is not a direct sequel, but a
new protagonist in this series.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm hoping it. The thing I most want from
that game is someone that really likes Soushi Mood but
didn't love it as much as most people. Is that
I hope it that really westernly vibe that that first
trailer has. I hope that wasn't just the trailer, Like,
I hope the game kind of reflects that.
Speaker 2: I thought that was like a cool sort of like tone,
like wild Western vibe.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like a wild West vibe that I hope is
actually like present in the game. It wasn't just like
a I don't know, like a style thing from the trailer.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that is coming up soon October second. That's
like so soon.
Speaker 1: Actually, that's really yes. And we got to get through
Kingdom Come Deliverance too, Oh gosh. Yeah yeah, Hey, what's
your last one?
Speaker 4: Yeah, so you've you both have said most of my
honorable mentions, So my pick and my honorable mention are
going to be kind of curveballs. But my mention is
Sonic Racing Crossworlds, which I played summer game and is
like surprisingly fun. The racing feels really good. It has
this really fun like crossworld system where you change tracks
in the middle of a race. It has like really
deep customization of cars and not to mention, like I
can play as Echibond in it, i can play as
hot sun Amiku in it. I can play a SpongeBob
in it. It's just like everything. And then my full
pick is Damon x Machina Titanic Scion, Yeah, which I
feel like a lot of people probably haven't heard of.
The first Damen x Machini was like a really interesting
mech game on the Switch that had a lot of
I thought it had a lot of really interesting ideas,
but it felt kind of like underbaked in terms of
narrative structure, Like it just felt like it could have
been more and all regards, like, Titanic Scion looks like
that more that I wanted from the first game, Like
it has a much more narrative. It's art style has
been very much refined as like a really interesting mech
system where you're not like necessarily in a mech, you're
in like a armor suit mech kind of thing. And
that's a really interesting idea because you don't see a
lot of mech games where you have like the Iron
Man kind of suit instead of a standard mech. So
I think it just looks really cool and like I said,
kind of this forwarding of the first game that could
be really meaningful, and we just don't have enough mech games,
enough good mech games.
Speaker 3: Is it you suit a mech that's.
Speaker 4: In this game? I think it technically applies.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I've never thought about it this hard, but now
I'm like, is suit mech?
Speaker 1: I don't know? I mean like iron Man like his
Iron Man?
Speaker 3: Is iron Man a mech?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Like Spider Man and mech in.
Speaker 3: But then wouldn't that be like Gundam. A Gundam is
just a really big suit, then some gun like logic
thrown at me.
Speaker 4: Fighter has like the Pacific rim style, where like they're
in these suits directly controlling this.
Speaker 3: They're in the like the vard suits doing the are
you put up?
Speaker 1: I think you're caught up on scale, like you're saying
if it's not like a giant sized thing, that it's
not me.
Speaker 3: I think it's also control scheme to an extent, like
do you have to pilot something versus it being an
extension of your natural bodies motor functions?
Speaker 1: You know. I think if we could do both. Like
Iron Man, he can send the Suit to do things
on its own sometimes.
Speaker 3: If he needs to, but doesn't like Jarvis do that
stuff or whatever. The replacement for Jarvis was.
Speaker 4: So by extension.
Speaker 3: Yeah, huh is Jarvis a part of him? Does this
Unit two have a soul play near automata?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Anyways, I don't know that's that's a tax taxonomical question
that I don't have the answer for. So Suit mech
I guess.
Speaker 1: Sure we'll go with that. Yeah, that's last game.
Speaker 3: I don't know. We're so deep into the podcast that
just like fried my brain.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: For my honorable mentions, I want to shout out good
Night Universe, which is the next game from the Before
Your Eyes team, very excited for that. I want to
shout out Digimon Time Digimon Story Time Stranger, a game
that I was very surprised by at SGF ended up
being my favorite game that I saw at SGF. It
was very very good. I'm also very interesting blood Lines too,
because I am a longtime Bloodlines one fan and I'm
just really curious where it landed. Yeah. Yeah, you know,
after years and years of that development, shifting round and
going to different teams and going through different iterations. I
just want to know what it is at the end
of the day and how much that bloodline's name ends
up carrying into the final product. But I think for
my last big one, it's another ambiguous twenty twenty five,
I believe still. I checked the calendar and I think
this is still labeled as a twenty twenty five. I'm
like double checking it now and definitely not ramping at
the moment to make sure it is. It's coming soon
on Steam, so maybe I won't say though it was Witchbrook.
I believe Witchbrook is kind of ambiguous where it's going
to land, so that one is kind of up there. Yeah,
it's it's on our release calendar is twenty twenty five.
But I'm curious about that one because I think just
the idea of you know, somewhat magical living in a
community and going to a magical college and doing all
the sorts of you know, just kind of vibing and
doing magic stuff is like really appealing. I really want
to see that. I love the art style, I love
the way it's all laid out. I love that's coming
from Chucklefish. Obviously, this is not the next star to
that that'll be Haunted Chocolate tear down the line. But
I think Witchbrook has looked really promising, and every showing
that's had so far, it's looked like something that can
really stand on its own and do something really cool
and be even a little bit more than its premise
of just magical life sim So I think that one
has real potential to basically drop and completely dominate the
conversation for months afterwards. So if you're looking for a
sleeper pick, I think that's it's not even really a
sleeper pick. I feel like most people once they hear
about it and see it, they're like, oh, I want
to play this game right now. Yeah, So I have
a feeling that this one's going to be quiet until
all of a sudden it isn't, so that one's definitely
on my radar. Would be my last pick. Yeah, that's
another game that's been floating around for like feels like forever.
Yeah yeah, but okay, Yeah, that's a whole lot of
games for.
Speaker 1: Everyone to chew on there. We'll see how many of
them pan out, hopefully all of them. And yeah, we'll
be playing Nose as well as again Blood Packed. We
said we were going to finish our backlog games, so
we're gonna hold you like people watching are gonna hold
us to this.
Speaker 3: We trust the audience to keep us accountable on this.
If you at home want to do a blood pack,
hold your thumb to the screen and Miller messaging me like,
why did we get demondetized in the last episode. Don't
worry about it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's I assure you, it's only for good reasons. Yes. Well,
that wraps up the show. Everyone, Thank you so much,
just for a bit of quick housekeeping. If you're listening
to this on audio, be sure to visit game Informa
dot com. You can also check us out on YouTube
at YouTube dot com slash game Informer, where you can
look at our beautiful faces as well as check out
all of our other video features, new gameplay Today, video reviews,
all that wonderful stuff. You can check us out on Twitch,
twitch out tv, slash game Informer. We're trying to get
some live streams up and going again, and you can
also reach out to each of us individually on social media.
You can find me on Blue Sky at Marcus Stewart
seven West can where can the people reach out to you?
Speaker 2: On Blue Sky at Wesley LeBlanc and you can see
my adventures on TikTok, which are in production at Wesley
the Blanc seven. I'm trying to be more active there.
I have not been active for a week now, so
I'm already failing. But you know, it's as it goes.
Speaker 1: We'll get there. Eric. Where can people find you on
social media?
Speaker 3: I don't do a ton of social media these days.
I mostly just randomly shout thoughts into blue Sky over
at smusy. So if you want to just see really
dumb posts and thoughts that I have at like two
in the morning, that's a great time to just go
find that and be rewarded for that. Yeah, find me
over there.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, and hey, first of all, thank you again
for joining us. Where can people find you online? And
please feel free to plug anything that year working on.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so you can find me on blue Sky for
social media at soul Fleet sol Fleet. Most of my
work will be on Inverse dot com, but in the
near future I will be launching a new newsletter. It's
RPG focused that's entirely my own, so keep an eye
out for that.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, Well, thank you for listening, guys. Everybody on
YouTube Spotify, Apple Podcast, wherever you enjoyed the show. We
love you so much and we'll see you next Thursday.
What a new episode of the Game and former show. Bye.