Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, welcome back to the Game and Former Show.
We've got a bit of a different episode this week
for you. Instead of our typical roundtable discussion where we
talk about the ladies gaming news and reviews and exclusive
reveals alongside Game and Former staff and special guests from
around the industry, today we're changing it up and we're
each going to be recording in a little solo segment
talking about our games that we're looking forward to checking
out over the Thanksgiving break, And I think it's a
great way for you to know what we're up to,
what we're playing behind the scenes, and as well as
you know, get some recommendations for games maybe you want
to check out. So I hope you enjoy this special episode.
It's going to be shorter obviously than usual, but I
think it's a great way for us to at least
get something up for you, whether you're listening in between
you know, runs to get a new plate at Thanksgiving,
or if you are not someone who celebrates the holiday,
or you're in another location where the holidays is not
a holiday week. You know, we hope you enjoyed this
episode regardless. Thanks as always for listening, folks, and hope
you enjoy.
Speaker 2: Hey everybody, it's Matt Miller here, editor in chief at
Game Informer.
Speaker 3: Happy Thanksgiving.
Speaker 2: We wanted to talk a little bit about some of
the games we're going to be playing over the break,
maybe give you some ideas about things that you might
be to enjoy. For me, I'm diving back into one
of my favorite games of the last several months. I
don't know if everybody's had a chance to play it yet.
Absolum is an amazing brawler and it's one you should
absolutely check out it. It parkens back to some of
those old kind of fantasy brawlers from the early days,
even things like Golden Acts or the early like D
and D brawlers like Champions of Mystara and that kind
of thing.
Speaker 3: But man that.
Speaker 2: By adding in a rogue light component to what they're doing,
it's a perfect matchup for the way that you'd want
to have.
Speaker 3: A brawler experience.
Speaker 2: They also have some really fun build crafting as you
go through each run, So you choose your character and
you're going through this big fantasy world and fighting different
bosses and that kind of thing, and as you go,
not unlike Hades, you are selecting a build and different
powers to focus on, and there's a certain level of
like they push you towards cool build combos as you progress,
and they also change the state of the world quite
regularly to advance the story and to change things up
and to give you different paths to pursue and that
kind of thing. It's incredibly fun. I think you're for
a lot of folks when you think about it, beat
them up. You think about a game you might play
for like a few hours and then put down, but
this is a game that you could play for just
dozens of hours. It's a really, really robust, big game,
and I think it's one of those that would be
easy to have gone under the radar in twenty twenty five,
and it should not be missed. You can play at solo,
but you can also play with a friend, either locally
or online. I kind of wish it had for player
that was maybe the be the only thing I kind
of wish that it had that it didn't. But the
game itself has tight combat, it's really fun, it has
this great progression loop. I highly recommend it if you're
looking for a fun kind of fantasy action experience. Another
thing I'm planning to go back to is Assassin's Creed Shadows.
That's a game that, you know, I think it's fair
to say no pun intended here. It was overshadowed, perhaps
by by Ghost later in the year, but I'm a
big Assassin's Creed enthusiast. I really like what they did
with Shadows in a lot of ways. I like the
big open world that they have in that game. There's
a lot of activities to do, and one thing that
I haven't had a chance to really fully explore yet
is the expansion that they released called Clause of Awaji,
that suppose, from what I've heard, helps to wrap up
some of the lingering story threads that got left behind
at the end of the core game, which I think
for myself maybe some other folks who played that game,
it was easy to feel like there was a lot
of build up along certain plot threads that didn't maybe
totally get where it needed to go. And I've heard
that Clause resolves some of that, which I'm stoked about.
And I'm also just excited to go back into that world,
see those characters again, which I like, revisit my my
hideout space that I spent so much time building up.
I think if you played Ghosts this year but you
didn't play ac Shadows, it might be worth thinking about.
Speaker 3: It's it's it would be.
Speaker 2: Easy to overlook it, but I wouldn't do that. It's
it's a it's a cool game. It's a cool advancement
of the Assassin's Creed gameplay style, so I would check
it out. The other I think another game I have
been thoroughly engrossed in for the last year that I
continue to want to sing the praises for is Marvel Rivals.
That has has emerged for me really, I think a
lot of us at this point kind of have like
a hobby game that while I while we're playing other things,
you're also playing this one game that you go in
and you do a few matches, or you do a
few rounds, or you play a raid or whatever. For
me right now, that really is Marvel Rivals. I I
think it scratches that same itch that overwatched it years ago,
but it hits harder for me because I'm a you know,
Marvel Comics enthusiast. I like the third person action, I
like the destructibility, the environment. I really like the art
style of that game. And uh and I think they've
done an awesome job of supporting it here. I mean,
we're about a year in. It's an annivers you know,
it's the anniversary now, first anniversary of.
Speaker 3: The game being out.
Speaker 2: But they have expanded it with new characters, is new maps,
new modes consistently throughout the last twelve months. And I've
found it to be a really rewarding and fun game
to try out different characters and and dive in and
try to get good with one, and you you climb
them up the ladder, and then when you're getting kind
of sick of him, you're like, I'm gonna go, I'm
going to go try to learn this other character now.
And in particular, I'll say that the new character that
they just added, Gambit from the X Men, is a
really really fun healer, a strategist that has some unique
twists on the game, on the gameplay that you're used
to having from a healer. I think he's really rocked
up the meta quite frankly, and in how that game
is playing, you see him in a lot of matches,
so you might be hard, it might be hard to
snag him sometimes at the character select, but.
Speaker 3: He's cool.
Speaker 2: He's a really really interesting variation on the on the concept.
So you know, check that game out if you if
you haven't tried it yet, or if you maybe just
tried it at launch and and had your fun and
went elsewhere, I.
Speaker 3: Think it's worth going back and checking out.
Speaker 2: I do a lot of the tabletop you know, the board,
card tabletop role playing game covers, like all that kind
of stuff here at Game Informer, and so I also
wanted to take this chance to to throw out a
couple of fun recommendations there of things that I'm gonna
be playing over the holidays.
Speaker 3: We're gonna have a lot more of this in.
Speaker 2: This next issue and over the holiday season, and I'm
gonna have some like a top ten tabletop game board
and card games, a separate list about the tabletop RPGs.
Speaker 3: That we're really strong this year.
Speaker 2: So you can keep an eye on GameInformer dot com
and on the magazine issues for that. But in the meantime,
I did want to throw out a couple that were
we're very cool games that I think you could snag
sometime soon if you're looking for something to play with
family and friends and uh and offer some ideas there.
One of those games is Lord of the Rings Fate
of the Fellowship. This is a really slick, cool board game.
It uses the old pandemic system if you've ever played
any of those board games. It's a cooperative game where
you're you know, you're playing the members of the Lord
of the Rings Fellowship as you're trying to save Middle Earth.
You're trying to get proto to throw the Ring into
Mount Doom, all that kind of stuff. But there's different
missions that you have to do in the meantime while
the Armies of Mortar and the Ring Rates are spreading
out across the map. It's a it's a very very
cool twist. It's i would say, maybe the most complex
and interesting variation on that pandemic formula, which has been
very well tread by the publisher. They've they've done that
in a bunch of different themes and and settings. But
this Lord of the Rings one is is very very cool.
Might be hard to track down a copy. I'll say
I had to really search through the local game stores
here the Twin Cities before I found found when I could,
I could snag. But it's it's great. If you want
something that's a little bit more party game, ask for
the holidays.
Speaker 3: I point you.
Speaker 2: Towards chit Chat. Chitchat Is is a fun, little conversation based.
Speaker 3: Game. It's it's cooperative.
Speaker 2: Actually, you are working together with the other people who
are playing, and you're trying to figure out It's like
get trivia questions on the cards that all have numerical answers,
and you don't need to know what the number is.
You need to know how the number fits with the
answers to other questions that that there that might be
on those cards. And so you might have like one
weird trivia question that like the answer is six hundred
and forty three, and another one that the answer is,
you know, two thousand, and you need to know that,
like the six forty three one comes before the two
thousand and one. And it makes for some fun, kind
of absurd conversations, and I think it's worth it's a
good time.
Speaker 3: I like it a lot.
Speaker 2: Another one that I would point folks towards is finn
span Uh. I bet if you even have even a
passing awareness of board games, you've probably heard of wing
span Uh. You know, board games have had some big,
kind of like standout success stories in in the last
decade or so Wingspan was a really really strong board game.
Finn Span is a is a I don't know if
i'd call it a sequel exactly, but it's a it's
the same idea but brought over to fish, where you're
you know, you've got different fish that you're you're hatching
and you're you're growing. Uh this environment, uh, this bias
sphere of fish, and and the way that the different
fish interact and how you grow and how you develop
and try to win the game is really fun. I
think it's one that's worth exploring if you're if you're
looking for a fun one to play with friends. And
the last one I threw out there is a game
called Jungo. This is This is a card game. Yeah,
maybe a little bit in a in the party game sphere,
but maybe a little bit more involved in that kind
of a strategic thing.
Speaker 3: It's one of those games that.
Speaker 2: I often when I've played it, I feel like it's
one of those games that's like like go Fish or
Uno or something like that, that you're while you're playing,
you're like, this totally feels like something that must have
been around for decades, but it's not. It's a new game.
It's very cool. It's very easy to learn. It has
to do the jungle name comes because all the cards
are monkey themed. It's a very very light theme that
doesn't doesn't do much. The fun is actually that the
numeric quality of things, because each of the cards has
UH has a number on it, and you're trying to
create larger sets or higher sets in your hand that
you can then play out onto the table. And so
if there's like two two's on the table, then you
could play you know, three threes onto the table or
something like that. And so you're you're always trying to
up the ante of what's been played out of.
Speaker 3: The table to get rid of all your cards.
Speaker 2: You're not allowed to rearrange the cards in your hand,
which is kind of the one of the other twists
on the experience. It makes me a really fun kind
of tactical play, but something that you can play quickly
in between rounds of other larger board games if you're
having like a board game get together with your friends.
I think it's one of the coolest new card games
in the last year and one that's worth checking out.
Speaker 3: So there you go.
Speaker 2: That's some of the stuff I'm gonna be digging into
over the Thanksgiving break and in the holidays.
Speaker 3: Be that.
Speaker 2: I hope everybody has a really awesome holiday coming up.
Speaker 3: And hey, thanks for following along with Game Informer. We
really appreciate it.
Speaker 4: Hie everybody, Hey, everybody, Marcus Stewart here, and yes, by
the time you're listening to this, I am probably knee
deep and a bunch of Thanksgiving food and catching the
itis and passing out on a cap somewhere. But when
I'm not doing that, I do plan to spend this
Thanksgiving break playing a bunch of games. Probably it'll be
a mixture of new stuff that I haven't touched yet
from this year, as well as making my way through
my twenty twenty five backlog. One of the games I'm
definitely gonna be spending more time with is Hades two.
I have completed a few runs. I still have not
finished the full game, but I'm having a blast with it.
As a Giant Hades fan, I am very happy with
what Super Giant has accomplished with this sequel, so I
will definitely be putting in more runs than that. I'll
also be working my way through Holiday Silk Song, which
regret I have not played as much as I've been
wanting to just because I've been tied up with other games,
but I did pick it back up recently and I've
kind of found my groove again, so I want to
kind of continue that momentum keep working my way through
that game. I still have a ways to go. And
it's also great because it's a good podcast game. As
much as I do like the music and I game,
I do like putting it on when I'm watching or
not investead of necessarily watching something, but listening to a podcast,
if for no other reason, because it distracts me from
all the constant deaths and failures and sort of alleviates
the frustration that comes with that. In terms of stuff
that I want to try to start for the first time,
I've been sitting on wander Stop for a few months now.
This is the game by I believe, the creator of
the Stanley Parable, and it's sort of the sort of
like Cozy Shop like Owner game, but it's stars like
a Soldier and the story gets into some PTSD some
burnout themes that I think is really interesting. I know
Kyle was a fan of it, so I definitely want
to try that. And then I've also been sitting on
and consume me cool indie game that kind of touches
on eating disorders and sort of like, you know the
negative effects of that. Two smaller games, but twos that
I've really wanted to get to, So those will probably
be on docket, and then who knows what else. Like honestly,
even the game was saying, now, who knows how much
I'll play, if any of them, or if I'll commit
to them, because a part of my himself wants to
fire up the Call of Duty seven or Black Ops
seven campaign and run through that. Thanksgiving Day we'll be
at with family and friends, probably play some Jackbox and
Mario Kart, maybe some Team Sonic Racing. Who knows. It's
going to be a bunch of stuff. As much as
Thanksgiving is about eating a bunch of food, it's just
as much about playing a bunch of games for me.
So I'm excited to dive into it. It should be
a great holiday in general, and I hope all of
you watching and listening have a lovely Thanksgiving yourselves.
Speaker 5: Hey there, Kyle Hilliard, game in former magazine executive editor. Yeah,
we're recording individual thoughts on kind of you know, Thanksgiving
games and games throughout the year, and maybe games that
didn't get a lot of highlighting. One that sticks out
for me that I don't think I talked about it all,
whether that was Game Informer or even you know where
I contribute over at mid Max as well is Blade Chimera,
which came out early in the year. I'm actually gonna
google the release date for it because it really passed
me by. Blade Chimera one word technically came out January sixteenth,
So this is this is this is like an early
twenty twenty five game, one of the earliest, but it's cool.
It's it is a metroid Vania. It has just fantastic
pixel animation, just like awesome looking sprites, a lot of
Symphony of the Night inspiration in a huge way in
the way your primary character moves. But you have a gun,
which is kind of what sets it apart from Symphony
of the Night is you do have a blade, but
you also have a gun, and it when I explain
it or when I pitch it this way, and I
don't know, maybe it's not very exciting, but a lot
of the combat, at least the gun combat, is you
kind of slowly walking on a two D plane and
like just like loading up enemies with bullets as you're
kind of like walking and reloading, and it's just very
satisfying and it looks cool, and it's kind of gives
that symphony of the night vibe, but with guns, which
is unique, and I don't get that a lot. There
are certainly plenty of Metroid inspired games jump, you know,
search action games that have guns, but I don't know.
This one just felt a little unique, and I just
I love the way it looks. I'm a sucker for
great pixel art, and this is a game with great
pixel art. And in the face of an upcoming Metroid
this year, and Hollow Night is the big one Silksong,
I do fear that Blade Chimera will get a little
left behind because it is a pixelated Metroid inspired game.
And if a lot of folks, if they're gonna spend
time with a Metro inspired game, they're probably gonna play
Metroid or they're gonna play Hollow Night Silksong, which are
great games, absolutely, But I was kind of getting frustrated
with Hollow Night silk Song in that it's in that
it's a very difficult game, and when it came out.
I eagerly downloaded it and I was excited to play it,
but I found I just was not in the state
of mind to be challenged in that way. I just
wasn't in the mood for that. I'm sure I will
get back to Hollow Night at some point before the
end of the year and spend more time with it,
but I just was like, Ah, I like this two
D action. I want to explore a big map, but
I just don't know if I want to be challenged
this month. I don't know if I want to keep
fighting the same bosses over and over and over and
over again. And I kind of landed on Blade Chimra.
I've been playing on I'm playing it's a switch one
game I've been playing on my switch to and I
just I really got into it. I didn't It's it
just hit that sort of like that thing that I
wanted in the moment of like a search action game
that wasn't just so punishing. In Blade Chimera, the handful
of bosses that I that I've defeated have taken me
like at most two to three tries, you know, with
a couple of just one. And it's and that's the design.
It's it's not meant to sort of frustrate you, but
it's it's satisfying that it looks great, and it's got
kind of an interesting story. You're like an amnesiac soldier
who has like a demon who's kind of connected to you.
Which is funny because Possessors, which came out later in
the year, kind of had sort of a similar sort
of utterly set up. But I'm sure they differentiate themselves
quite a bit. But yeah, Blade Chimera, I I would
recommend it, but I don't know if it's going to
be on a lot of like end of the year
games and or end of the year lists and things
like that, including game informers. I don't I don't think
we have a We put a side space for it,
which would have been my call. I would have been
the on to st step up four. But this is
I think this is a good platform to talk about
play time here. I also want to use this opportunity
to talk about Thanksgiving memories because it is a holiday
that I associate with video games in a huge way. Nowadays,
I feel like we get big releases throughout the year.
February and March have weirdly become these windows for like
huge releases. But certainly when I was growing up, certainly
when I was in high school and most in part
of college, it felt like when you know, when retail
was still huge part of video game sales, and like,
you know, the Xbox Live Arcade was not quite a
thing yet. Steam wasn't really quite a thing yet. I mean,
certainly Steam started in two thousand and four, but you know,
it took a couple of years to sort of become popular.
All that to say is a lot of huge games
would come out in November. The games that you were
looking forward to all year dropped in November. And in
high school and from me in college later it became
this window. It became this dedicated video game window where
I at least had a couple of days where I
could fully focus in on a video game. And I remember,
in particular in college, I remember it was a lot
of you know, my friends at least, like we all
kind of dispersed and went to colleges that were all
a couple hours away, and then Thanksgiving break rolled around
and we all kind of reconvened, and that is how
we played games. Like Halo two was you know, we
were a big Land party Halo group, and then you know,
Halo two came out while we were all in college,
and then we kind of came back together and all
played Halo two together during the break kind of locally,
which was like a lot of fun. I also have
specific memories of Fable, the original Fable. I remember starting
it in college and then really going all in on it,
like coming home for the Thanksgiving break from college and
just going all in on Fable and just being like
just letting myself get fully lost in that world. And
it's one of those games that for a long time,
I was like, I wish I could delete the part
of my brain that played Fable so I could play
it again, because I really just have a fond memory
of just you know, very limited responsibilities and just like
not having school deadlines or anything and just playing a
lot of Fable. And then you know, Meddle Gear Solid
three was another one of those where I just had
I hadn't started metal Gear Solid three because metal Gear
Solid one and two were so important to me that
I wanted to give Medle Gear Solid three sort of
the full attention that it deserves. And it was a
game that I kind of waited until I had some
time off to play, and to my memory, that happened
around Thanksgiving. But now as I'm saying it aloud, I'm
kind of like, wait, hold on, did that come out
around Thanksgiving? Did I make that up? Maybe it was
maybe that was more of a Christmas break game for me.
When what specific month did it come out? I came
out November seventeenth. Yeah, that was like you know right there,
Like I picked it up and I probably waited a
couple of days until the week that I finally had
talent to time off to finally play Metal Gearssault three.
But unfortunately, in that time I read a lot about it,
and many elements of the game I had spoiled them
for myself. So I remember playing through uh meddle Gear's
Sult three and being like, wow, that's really cool. Kind
of wish I hadn't read about that. I wish I
hadn't done that to myself. So but you know, that's
my own problem. But anyway, Hey, thanks for supporting Game
Informer this year. This is an odd year for Game Informer.
We came back in February after the blip. We've come
to kind of call it because we've kind of disappeared
for a while, but we're back. People have been very
supportive and it's been heartwarming, and I have confidence about
the future Game Informer for the first time in a while. Frankly,
I'm happy with the way things are going, and I'm
happy to be writing about video games again. And I'm
very happy that you can find Game Informer on store shelves,
which is which is a wild thing. Never during my
time at Game Informer has that been a thing. So yeah,
you know, go to your local Barnes and Noble, pick
up a copy of Game Informer. What a strange thing
to pitch, What a strange thing to plug that shouldn't
be odd at all. But hey, thanks, thanks everybody. I
hope you have an awesome year. We'll be back before
the year concludes, and we'll you know, we have a
lot more end of the year game to talk about.
But check out Blake Kimera and check out now You're
Solid three Delta and think of me playing it during
Thanksgiving and having a wonderful time.
Speaker 3: All right, thank you.
Speaker 1: Hey, it's Alex Van Aiken, senior video editor here at
Game and form're talking about the games I'm going to
be playing over the holidays. Number one I think for
me is I really want to get to Morsels, which
is a creature collector rogue Light. It's developed by Ferkula.
I've met a few of the folks on that team,
Toby and Sam Webster, the sound designer and composer who
also worked on Grindstone. So if you know that soundtrack,
you should really check out Morsels because Sam has also
done all of the sound design in this game, as
well as the music. So I'm really looking forward to
playing this. Finally, I've played demos at various events in
the past, and it finally just released on the eighteenth,
just last week, and Yeah, I'm in the mood for
something weird and something fun and gritty and grimy. The
art style is excessive, and in the best way for
folks who might not be unaware. Toby Dixon worked on
Kndhog two and Atomic Crops, and so there's a lot
of that DNA here and Morsels. You know, really neat
scan lines and color gradients over top of really really
detailed and gorgeous pixel art. Everything just has like this
oozy vibe to it. You're playing these creatures that are
like it's like you're kind of in a sewer system,
it feels like, and you're coming across these creatures that
you'll be able to collect to get past certain challenges,
and they'll kind of evolve over time in really fun ways.
I really enjoyed the demos, like I said, and I'm
dying to play the full release. I have that actually
up here on my switch to loaded up, and yeah,
I can't wait to give Morsels another try, but for
real this time. Another game I'm looking forward to getting
to is a game that I started actually when it
launched in July. It's from Bubby dark Star, who's a
really well known indie developer who worked on Subway Midnight
and Bubby has also put out a lot of Itch
titles over the years. I'm pretty sure, just like if
you're in the indie space, you probably heard of them,
and if you haven't, you should definitely familiarize yourself because
I do really neat work. Over over the summer, Bubby
dark Star put out a like a hand drawn FPS
slash like narrative game, and the art style is it's
it's two D and it's almost like a boomer shooter
and where everything is on billboards. So like billboards is
like a term often used and game designed to talk
about like a a sprite or a two D image
that is always facing the player. It's kind of like
what gives classic like Boomer shooters like that vibe where like,
you know, everywhere you look the enemy is always facing you.
That's kind of what what that what that's from?
Speaker 2: Uh?
Speaker 1: And and and Shooty Shooty. Robot Invasion does a similar
sort of tech and it's it's kind of like this.
The art style brings about this really new, feeling, uncanny
and irrelevant vibe. You're essentially like there's robots invading and
you're you're defending Earth, you know, but there's all these
like weird, interesting characters who are asking favors for you
of you and and amitst like this in this Invasion.
It's a really it's a really cool looking game, and
it's one that I wish I had put more time
into when A launched. So I'm planning to to go
back and check that out this holiday. I also know,
you know, probably Dark Star, Uh you know, I I
want to see them make more stuff, and so I
want to I want to support them, and especially shout
them out here on this this podcast hopefully get some
more people checking out that game, because I think it's
definitely worth checking out Shooty Shooty Robot Invasion. What else
I I I have been playing. I'm back on League
of Legends with one Eric Van Allen, fellow video editor
here at a Game Informer, and we've been playing a RAMU,
specifically a new mode called Mayhem, which is a if
you don't know what a ram is, and if you
don't know what the League of Legends, League of Legends
is or the specifics of it, it's a mobia and
which means you are controlling a hero character and helping
to escort escort these grunt like AI minions uh to
eventually like if they if they make it far enough,
they'll kind of take out enemy towers and you have
to kind of use them to get close to a tower,
otherwise you'll take tower shots and die. And so both
teams are trying to do this and slowly dismantle the
the other team's defenses and and eventually you get to
if you if you get rid of all their towers
and and there are other structures you can take out
their their nexus, their core at their base and win
the game, and ARAM simplifies the concept. Usually in the
League of Legends there are three lanes. It's where like
stay in your lane. You know, a lot of people
say stay in your lane. Well, there's only one lane
in a RAM, and it goes to it goes to
the base, and there's there's there's fewer towers and such.
But it's really a sped up version of a regular
League of Legends game, and it's usually pretty chaotic because
typically you're playing characters like randomized characters. You don't know
who you're gonna play, uh, and you kind of have
a like small pool of characters to choose from that
your team has, and it's just like a fun chaotic way.
You get a lot of team comps that that are
normally not not played do do like sort of like
roll Q and stuff. But Mayhem is a version of
of a RAM that's even more zany. And then they've
kind of introduced similar I guess I've heard some friends
call it like almost like rogue light perks. I don't
know if it's I wouldn't necessari say like rogue Light,
but like you're getting like a series of six perks
every so often throughout the game, and you're like, they
are like game breaking things, like they are increase your
range by two hundred and fifty, so suddenly a melee
character can hit you from across the field or turn
into a tiny version of yourself. And the bigger your
opponents are, the more like distance and scale difference in
scale between you and your opponents, the more damage you do.
It's like really fun, silly, stupid kind of augments to
the base normal game, and it's a lot of fun.
It's you can really make some busted characters. You also,
you know, you can make some pretty you can make
some duds, which I often do, but I still have
a lot of fun. There's like very little stakes. It's
just a fun way to explore the game and and
to learn learn more about characters that you normally normally
don't play because there are there are hundreds of characters
in the League of Legends, and so yeah, I'm really
enjoying Legal Legends a RAM. Similarly, another update to an
existing game I've been playing, uh, you know, Fortnite Simpsons
having a lot of fun exploring Springfield, as as Marge
and and Bart in them, And I think Fortnite continues
to to impress me with just like the level of
detail that they bring when when partnering with with some
of these big ip I think it's funny that, you know,
other other collaborations, you know, they'll transform a couple of zones,
I'll introduce some characters or like a new ability or something,
whereas Simpsons, the entire level is just the Simpsons everything
is in it and more of a Simpsons art style.
You've got you know, the factory and the neighborhoods of
Springfield and all that, uh and and that's it. Like
there's no regular non Simpsons POI and so it like
makes our very immersive and silly experience. But yeah, I
think I think I'm gonna pass it to another editor,
or maybe I'm at the end.
Speaker 6: I don't know.
Speaker 1: But thank you for checking out the show this week.
It really means a lot, and we hope that this
was like a fun way too for us to kind
of share about what we're talking about, share about what
we're playing rather uh and and talk about what's on
our plates, you know, outside outside of that food.
Speaker 3: You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: All Right, I'm done here. Thanks for watching y'all, I'll
see you next time. Goodbye.
Speaker 6: Hey game a former show, It's associate editor Charles here,
and this year the game I'm thankful for.
Speaker 3: Is Dungeons and Dragons.
Speaker 6: I've talked about this game a good bit on the show,
I'm pretty sure, and if you know me outside of
just the game and former show, you know this is
kind of one of my things. I very much like
Dungeons and Dragons obviously, but it's not on my list
because I'm planning to play it this Thanksgiving break, although
I would like to if I had time. I'm just
planning to watch a bunch of it, and I thought
it was an interesting thing of games you're grateful for,
or games that you're fans of not necessarily because you're playing,
but because you're observing other people play it, or you're
kind of existing in the community, and kind of in
the way that like games are unique in that you
can kind of be an auxiliary fan of a thing
without necessarily participating all the time. So, for example, Dungeons
and Dragons. I really like the show Dimension twenty. I've
been listening to not Another D and D podcast a
lot lately. I'm in the second campaign on that one,
and just the notion that someone someone could listen to
a ton of dungeons and Dragons content. I listened to
all of the Adventure Zone Balance before I ever actually
played a game. The notion that you could be a
fan of a game without ever actually having played the
game does also extend to some video games, like there's
people that I know I really enjoyed watching like Competitive
and Justice Too for a while, even though I had
the game and I kind of played it, but I
wasn't watching it in the sense that I was trying
to practice my combos or competing in tournaments or whatever.
Speaker 3: I just thought it was cool.
Speaker 6: I liked watching it, and I liked understanding how the
characters matched up and if people were mastering this or
who was good or whatever. And I do think there's
like an esports component of it in the way also
that you know, if someone says I'm a really big
fan of football, you probably don't assume if they're an
adult anyways, you don't assume that they play football. You
a seem that they watch football and learn a lot
about it, which is also a game. It's just a
way that humans enjoy games is finding the masters of
a game and just really enjoying all the statistics and
the gameplay and the mechanics of that. And that does
extend to video games and tabletop games. I think there's
even and a further extension of they don't even have
to be masters of the craft. They can just be
entertaining people. If you're watching a streamer you like, for example,
you really like someone that plays the Sims, you really
like someone that plays Animal Crossing, or even like a
Northern Lion type right where he's playing a roguelike or whatever,
and you're not necessarily ever gonna play it, but you'll
be like, oh, yeah, I like Balatro. I've never played it.
I've just seen other people play it a lot.
Speaker 3: And I think.
Speaker 6: In the video game space because so many of us
are ostracized for lack of a better term in school
and varying degrees of severity depending on your social situation,
but there's a real intense need to like Gatekeep and
say no, I'm a real video game fan because I
played Dark Souls or I played this game all the
way to the end, and you don't even count because
you're not playing. But when we talk about video games
as a culture, as an industry, it's not necessarily just
the players. Sometimes now it's the viewers or the wider enjoyers,
or you know, you're sitting in the Marvel Rival subreddit
and listening to all the back and forth, which is
what I'm doing. And I haven't played in weeks, but
I still find I still pay a touch to the
game and updates and all that. So this year, I
guess if I'm thankful for a thing or a concept,
it is the idea that games are meant to be played,
but you don't always have to be the one playing them,
and you can still enjoy them like dungeons and Dragons,
like an esport, like a casual streamer, without necessarily being
the ones with your hands on the dice around the controller.
And I think that's a perfectly valid and exciting way
to do it.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 6: I hope this Thanksgiving you find some time to chill,
whether that is playing a game or watching a game
or something in between. I hope you guys have a
happy Thanksgiving.
Speaker 7: Hey, Game Informer, this is Eric Van Allen, one of
your video editors here, and for this holiday, I think
I'm dipping into Trails in the Sky first chapter again
It's really been my kind of go to game for
the last few months, I think, and it's been a
joy to just always have there to go back to
after every assignment, after every review game that I pick up.
It's been the thing that I kind of constantly returned
to over and over and over again. I love the
story of a Stelle and Joshua learning to become kind
of junior Bracers and come into their own in a
world that feels really fully realized. I think that's one
of my favorite parts of the game so far, and
really like what feels like the appeal of the Trail
series is having this world that feels very lived in,
has all these different moving parts and cogs that interconnect
and form the sort of tensions that happen around the character, political,
or whether around different forces moving in the background. I
love that stuff. So that's probably top of my list
for the holidays is to get some more progress and
done in that. Otherwise, I think I'm looking towards probably
Clubhouse Games. That's always a classic that comes out. I'm
play no secrets, I hold nost versions that I'm not
like a Clubhouse Games megafan. At the end of the day,
I love just sitting down with that game and going
through all the different versions of old board games, card games,
strange marble based games like Nine Men's Morris, and working
on my different metals for them and getting all of
them locked in, or playing them with a family. We
love playing stuff like Ludo or Last Card, which is
a Nintendo's version of Uno. It's a really really enjoyable thing.
I think my family has always really liked doing some
kind of board game, card games something like that during
the holidays, and clubhouse games kind of slotted in really
well for that, something where we could all kind of
grab a controller, hook the dock up, pass pass around,
play some Ludo, play some blackjack. We've done that a
few times before, kind of silly or just you know
Connect four stuff like that, you know, and then that's
the physical version of Connect four, but I think there
is a digital one in clubhouse games as well. Anything
like that I think always really gets a lot of
play during the holiday times. So I'm going to be
bringing that back with me. I'm also going to try
to teach my family how to play Magic. The Avatar
set finally broke the seal. Multiple members of my family
are big Avatar fans, and so they really were like, hey, okay,
you win, teach us how to play magic. We saw
the Avatar art that looks really sick. We want to learn,
So I'm bringing a bunch of Jumpstar packs home. If
you've ever wanted to learn how to play magic, or
if you if you yourself play magic and you want
to teach somebody else how to do it, I think
the Jumpstar packs are actually one of the best ways
of doing it. You just buy two of them. They're
kind of thicker booster packs, and the whole idea is
that you smack them together and they make one playable deck.
And so you just get two of them, smack them together,
get two of them, smack them together, You've got two
decks to play with. I'm bringing like eight of them
home so that way we can kind of mix and match.
They each come with different color combinations or focuses or
ideas in them that can play well with each other.
And this set for Avatar, I think is really maybe
my favorite of the year, which is weird to say,
considering Final Fantasy was also this year, and I also
really liked the Edge of Eternities, but the Avatar set
has really incredible mechanics. I think the air bending, the earthbending,
the water bending, the fire bending, all of it feels
very fully realized in magic creating these mechanics that feel
like they do in the show, and then also feel
really good as magic mechanics for opening up avenues of
different kinds of play. They all have very cool, unique
ways of being employed and doing cool things with them.
And I can't wait to see how the jump Star
cards land with the family. I know some folks will
be hoping to get certain characters, obviously Zuko Katara, famous
characters like that. I just I want to run a
cabbage merchant. That'd be sick, you know, get some get
some bossco the bear action out there. But it's always
really fun. I find that the holidays are a time
for me of social playing stuff. Sitting at a table
playing a game, sitting around a TV playing some jack box,
playing some some clubhouse games. It's always about being together
and in the moment. And I love games that put
you in the moment with other people, and so I
love this time of year for that. And then you know,
when it gets late at night, it gets cozy, you know,
the temperature drops get a little RPG, you sit down
with that, you go off to your cozy rocker by
the fire or something like that with the trails in
the sky. It's a good pick. So yeah, check those
out if you're looking for something for this holiday break.