Speaker 1: You're listening to episode sixty eight of game Spot After Dark.
Speaker 1: This week, we're taking a look at Calli's review of
Speaker 1: Call of Dooty Black Ops Cold War and to Moore's
Speaker 1: review of Demon Souls. On top of that, wrestle buddies
Speaker 1: Matt Elfring and Chris Hayner will join me to talk
Speaker 1: about the new AEW game that just got announced. Hello,
Speaker 1: and welcome to episode sixty eight of GameSpot After Dark,
Speaker 1: GameSpot's official video game podcast. I'm your host, Jake Decker,
Speaker 1: and joining me this week is Lucy James, Hello, Tomorrow's
Speaker 1: saying Hi, and Kellie Plagy Hello. This week's episode is
Speaker 1: going to be a little bit short because we are
Speaker 1: going to skip what we've been playing, because what we've
Speaker 1: been playing are games that just got reviewed, and fortunately
Speaker 1: we've got both the reviewers for said games here, So
Speaker 1: with that in mind, we're going to move right onto
Speaker 1: the topics this week. But before we do that, I
Speaker 1: do want to shout out. This weekend is our extra
Speaker 1: live stream. Some things have changed around a little bit.
Speaker 1: We were going to do a seventy two hour stream,
Speaker 1: but we've scaled it back to twenty four hour. We've
Speaker 1: scaled it back.
Speaker 2: I think we I think, well, so probably overall, once
Speaker 2: it's all done, it'll be more like fifty something. This
Speaker 2: weekend is twelve hours.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, So basically what's going to happen is that
Speaker 1: we're going to have one twelve hour stream that's planned out,
Speaker 1: and that's going to be the main extra live stream.
Speaker 1: After that, the following week we are going to stream
Speaker 1: individually after work, during our off time and whatnot through
Speaker 1: the game spot Twitch. So if you want to, if
Speaker 1: you want to donate, if you want to hang out,
Speaker 1: be sure to follow game Spot's switch account and just
Speaker 1: check our social media becuse I'm sure we're going to
Speaker 1: be tweeting about it. But we have some cool ideas
Speaker 1: planned for that initial twelve hour live stream, and then
Speaker 1: I think we have some cool ideas for these shorter
Speaker 1: mini live streams, Like in particular, I think we might
Speaker 1: stream one of our fas Momphobia sessions because those are
Speaker 1: always off the rails and a lot of fun. And
Speaker 1: as well as that, maybe we'll do some demon souls
Speaker 1: maybe tomorrow, do some metal gear.
Speaker 3: We should do some overwatch time.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, yeah, we should do the bottom of the
Speaker 4: Losers League crew.
Speaker 2: We were playing a few nights ago, and we were
Speaker 2: playing on PC with like Andy Cortez and James Williams
Speaker 2: and a couple of others, and we were doing so badly.
Speaker 5: That we decided to turn the league upside down.
Speaker 4: So we were aiming to be at the bottom of
Speaker 4: the league as quickly as possible.
Speaker 2: And it was surprising how much we managed to hit
Speaker 2: that goal.
Speaker 3: I think we I think legit.
Speaker 2: We won one game and it was the final one
Speaker 2: and we all just know we're done, We're out.
Speaker 1: Well, that sums up my entire experience with Black Ops
Speaker 1: called for multiplayers so far.
Speaker 6: Yep.
Speaker 1: But that being said, the two games we're going to
Speaker 1: talk about this week are, of course Demon Souls two
Speaker 1: more you reviewed that and Call of Duty Black Ops
Speaker 1: Cold War, or as we like to call it, Cod
Speaker 1: Blops cow Well it is Lucy was only said that
Speaker 1: and it's Stuck, but Kelly reviewed that. What do you
Speaker 1: guys want to start with? What do you think we
Speaker 1: should talk about?
Speaker 6: First?
Speaker 3: Yak is a like a dragon.
Speaker 1: All right, let's start with that.
Speaker 3: It's a great game. You should all play it.
Speaker 1: We talked a little bit about it last week. I
Speaker 1: gotta play more of it. I haven't had time, but yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's very good.
Speaker 4: Every time I think about yakas I like a dragon,
Speaker 4: I think about the character's main main characters name Ichipon,
Speaker 4: and then I think about Joey Tribani's advert for Ichibon
Speaker 4: lipstick for men from Friends Psycho. So yeah, that's my
Speaker 4: impression of ya because I like a dragon.
Speaker 6: Hic.
Speaker 1: There you have.
Speaker 3: That's the podcast.
Speaker 1: Why don't we start with Call of Duty? Yeah, Kelly,
Speaker 1: you're reviewing this game. Technically, your review isn't live yet,
Speaker 1: but you have a review in progress and you're actively
Speaker 1: playing it. However, by the time this goes up, your
Speaker 1: review should be live.
Speaker 7: Yeah. Yeah, So the reviewing progress focused heavily on the campaign,
Speaker 7: which I really enjoyed. I think it's like it's so
Speaker 7: different from Modern Warfare, which I think is really self serious.
Speaker 7: And you know, the further away I got from that game,
Speaker 7: the more I disliked it, whereas I thought Cold War
Speaker 7: is a lot more fantastical. It's just kind of like
Speaker 7: like you're just back on your bullshit. It's what it
Speaker 7: feels like to me, and you can't really write that
Speaker 7: into review. So I wrote a lot of words about
Speaker 7: why I had fun with it. There's like a level
Speaker 7: in particular, I would say it's like halfway through the
Speaker 7: campaign that I think is like so cleverly done and
Speaker 7: really fun and different from the rest of the levels
Speaker 7: where you're inside a KGB building and I don't know,
Speaker 7: there's just a lot of like spy bullshit. That's that's
Speaker 7: like I just really really enjoyed, even though like, yeah,
Speaker 7: I think it's funny to goof on Ronald Reagan or whatever.
Speaker 7: People have been like dunking on the non binary character option,
Speaker 7: which I think is just from a place where they
Speaker 7: don't understand what it actually does in the game, which
Speaker 7: is just make sure they use the right pronouns when
Speaker 7: they talk about you in the third person. It's not
Speaker 7: like a big deal at all, but like it's so
Speaker 7: far from reality in my opinion that I just got
Speaker 7: to have fun with it and it didn't make me
Speaker 7: think about like sad and bad things. So I appreciated
Speaker 7: that the bar is so low. But it's actually good multiplayer,
Speaker 7: you know, like I'm still playing that. I've been having
Speaker 7: a lot of server issues, so that's been kind of
Speaker 7: delaying the review a little bit, which is just you know,
Speaker 7: to be expected because obviously this is not just a
Speaker 7: cross platform game, it's also a cross generation game that
Speaker 7: was released during a pandemic. So like, I'm not going
Speaker 7: to be too upset about some server issues, but I
Speaker 7: really liked Combined Arms. Like Combined Arms.
Speaker 3: As a mode.
Speaker 7: It's like, I think it does ground war a lot
Speaker 7: better than ground War did in modern warfare. Like it's
Speaker 7: a bigger I think it's twelve y twelve vehicle focused,
Speaker 7: objective based thing, but I found it a lot snappier
Speaker 7: than ground War. I didn't care for ground War very much,
Speaker 7: and so I'm enjoying that a lot. There's one map
Speaker 7: that I think is so clever where it's just like
Speaker 7: a bunch of ships and you can get on like
Speaker 7: a it's not quite a jet ski, I don't know
Speaker 7: what you would call it, but some like little speedboat
Speaker 7: thing and then do yeah, sure, I like the.
Speaker 2: Way I think that's a ski thing, like a like
Speaker 2: a jet ski of the snow.
Speaker 7: They do have that snowmobiles in some levels.
Speaker 5: A jet ski snow episode title this.
Speaker 4: Week that's ironically it sounds like a like a Demon
Speaker 4: Souls character. Hello, it's me, my name is My name
Speaker 4: is author I am the jet ski of the snow.
Speaker 7: That's the vehicle I'm taking straight to hell. Yeah, you
Speaker 7: get on like a speedboat, or you can get in
Speaker 7: like a boat with a turret, so you can pilot, pilot,
Speaker 7: captain drive. Do you drive boats. I don't know a
Speaker 7: lot about maritime anything, maritime law.
Speaker 1: All I know is you can get away with anything
Speaker 1: on the open sea.
Speaker 5: Don't threaten me with a maritime.
Speaker 3: See the blue pot is the land.
Speaker 7: Something something because of the implication anyway, so taking a swig. Sorry, absolutely,
Speaker 7: we're just this has been a fun train wreck of
Speaker 7: a minute here. But anyway, Yeah, you can like use
Speaker 7: the ships like many boat things to get from ship
Speaker 7: to ship where there's different objectives And my dog is
Speaker 7: barking and it's really distracting me. But the point is
Speaker 7: it's a clever integration of vehicles that I found really fun.
Speaker 7: And like I said, I think it just embraces like
Speaker 7: the back on our bullshit kind of vibe I'm getting
Speaker 7: from Cold War where it's just like having a good time.
Speaker 7: You know, may or may not be committing war crimes,
Speaker 7: but if we are, they they didn't exist in real life,
Speaker 7: so that's nice and there's and there's stiplines.
Speaker 2: Man, I ask a question about a character from the
Speaker 2: campaign because I haven't played it yet.
Speaker 3: Is that Robert Redfood?
Speaker 7: I am not good with actors.
Speaker 2: It looks so much like Robert Redfood that I was like,
Speaker 2: this is one way to get me involve.
Speaker 7: If you want to know what songs are featured in
Speaker 7: the campaign that I'm able to pick out, but not
Speaker 7: an actor's case. We got the song stroke Me, which
Speaker 7: was featured on the Blades of Glory soundtrack. Oh nice,
Speaker 7: I just dropped an image of potential of actual Robert Redford. Okay,
Speaker 7: I'm gonna click on this picture of it looks like him,
Speaker 7: but it's not him.
Speaker 5: Okay, definitely looks like Activision.
Speaker 3: You've lost a customers.
Speaker 7: Oh and you got some Steppenwolf in the Vietnam flashback
Speaker 7: of course, damn game.
Speaker 6: You know.
Speaker 7: When I saw that, I was like, because I wrote
Speaker 7: I had to like write the words Steppenwolf in my
Speaker 7: review because I didn't know how else to describe that moment.
Speaker 7: And then that news came out and I was like, wait,
Speaker 7: did I get the name of that band wrong? And
Speaker 7: then I had to like look it up again.
Speaker 5: No, was what was the.
Speaker 2: Did they use the same song they used in Black Ops?
Speaker 2: Because I think they used rolling Stones, right, sympathy for
Speaker 2: the Devil, I want to say, in the Vietnam and
Speaker 2: they used I don't think there's any rolling Stones.
Speaker 1: I always just whenever there's a Vietnam scene, I always
Speaker 1: just assume it's going to be Creeden's clear Water, yeah
Speaker 1: or yeah, like that's always where my brain goes in
Speaker 1: like ninety five percent of the time.
Speaker 5: That's right.
Speaker 1: But yeah, this is this is not them, but Steppenwolf
Speaker 1: like is almost like they sound very fair and it works.
Speaker 7: It's in the same family. I also, I was really
Speaker 7: worried about the Vietnam flashbacks because that kind of thing
Speaker 7: gives me a lot of pause. But I think there's
Speaker 7: once again bullshit Black Ops reasons for it that I
Speaker 7: was just like, all right, whatever, I'm on board.
Speaker 3: So yeah.
Speaker 7: And then Zombies, which said about zombies because I've been
Speaker 7: playing a lot of that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Well, I mean I didn't want to talk a
Speaker 1: little b about the campaign too, because I did play
Speaker 1: through it and I feel the same way. I really
Speaker 1: enjoyed it. I thought it was a lot of fun.
Speaker 1: It definitely was more enjoyable than Modern Warfare's campaign. I
Speaker 1: think Modern Warfare had some standout moments that I preferred,
Speaker 1: like that part where you're like where you can choose
Speaker 1: which objective you want to take out at night or
Speaker 1: which objective you want to do in which order at
Speaker 1: night with the night vision.
Speaker 5: Like I thought that mission was cool.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like that mission was really cool. But one thing
Speaker 1: I really liked about the campaign this time around were
Speaker 1: the side missions because of how you had to I
Speaker 1: guess you could run them. You didn't need to, like
Speaker 1: there were ways to do them properly. You could just
Speaker 1: run them and just mess them up, or you could
Speaker 1: solve these little codes in order to figure out like
Speaker 1: what your who your targets are, or what exactly you're
Speaker 1: going after. And they give you a bunch of evidence
Speaker 1: and you have to cross reference the evidence and figure
Speaker 1: out a pattern that works and like solve passwords and stuff.
Speaker 1: It feels really cool, like it's simple. But I don't know,
Speaker 1: I really liked how it worked. It just felt like
Speaker 1: a neat little wrinkled to the normal call of duty
Speaker 1: madness that happens. And there is a lot of that.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of just like running and shooting and
Speaker 1: blowing things up, but I really like the quiet moments.
Speaker 1: And there's quite a bit in this game which surprised me.
Speaker 7: It's the first Call of Duty game I've ever played
Speaker 7: where I had to write down clues to a puzzle
Speaker 7: in my note Yeah.
Speaker 1: I had to do that too.
Speaker 4: I love the idea of thinking of your notebook and
Speaker 4: it's just the word gone fire, question mark.
Speaker 5: How long are your real last puzzle? How long is
Speaker 5: the campaign again? Did you say it's like five hours?
Speaker 1: Maybe?
Speaker 7: Music to my ears, I ran it twice because there's two.
Speaker 7: There's two like main endings, and then there's, like Jake said,
Speaker 7: some side stuff where you can do if you do
Speaker 7: the puzzle and you solve the puzzle correctly, you get
Speaker 7: like the true ending of that side story, or you
Speaker 7: can like just do it and then like it's like, oh,
Speaker 7: if we don't solve this, the spy ring will stay
Speaker 7: intact or whatever. And I don't think it actually like
Speaker 7: does anything to the story, but it's just like another
Speaker 7: like wrinkle that is kind of laid out for you
Speaker 7: at the end, like the things you did or didn't do.
Speaker 7: I will say that, Yeah, before I know, God, I'm
Speaker 7: all over the place. Sorry, but I do want to
Speaker 7: go back to the campaign to just to say that
Speaker 7: I do think that one of the endings, like the
Speaker 7: is like the like ostensibly the bad ending, because it's
Speaker 7: just like it makes you do some stuff that was
Speaker 7: like I was like, I don't want to do this.
Speaker 7: I feel so bad, Like it just makes you be
Speaker 7: the bad guy. And it's like so over the top
Speaker 7: and ridiculous that it's like whatever, but it it. The
Speaker 7: end result of it is that basically America does some
Speaker 7: bad stuff in the game that it could like it
Speaker 7: would be fair if you were another country to be like, wow, America,
Speaker 7: you really shit the bed on this one. That was
Speaker 7: not a cool thing that you did in the fifties.
Speaker 7: And then and then, but everybody in your squad is like,
Speaker 7: oh my god, if this thing happens, America is gonna
Speaker 7: be blamed. And I was like, yeah, I sure hope
Speaker 7: it does. And but like nobody seemed to nobody in
Speaker 7: the game seemed to think like, yeah, America really did
Speaker 7: screw up.
Speaker 3: This is a bad.
Speaker 5: Thing atrocities ahead, Yeah, I sure hope it does.
Speaker 1: There would have been such a good opportunity to explore
Speaker 1: that because in between missions, you go to your safe
Speaker 1: house where you talk to your crew members and you
Speaker 1: can pick dialogue options and ask them about different things,
Speaker 1: and that seems like the perfect place to address that.
Speaker 1: You even have someone from six and you'd imagine the
Speaker 1: person from Mi Sex would be like, Wow, you guys
Speaker 1: really mess this up, can't you.
Speaker 5: Oh you fucked it in it exactly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, But but that just kind of doesn't happen. Everyone
Speaker 1: just takes it as is. They're like, oh, we gotta
Speaker 1: stop the bad guy because the bad guy is going
Speaker 1: to do bad things with the thing we lost.
Speaker 7: Yeah, So so that that part I was kind of like, ah,
Speaker 7: you almost had me. It's it's so clear. It's like
Speaker 7: so clear that at least one person on that writing
Speaker 7: team is like really trying their hardest to like examine
Speaker 7: America's role in the world stage and American military religion
Speaker 7: as a concept, and like, you know, it's so clear
Speaker 7: that like and like even the I know, like like
Speaker 7: I said, I know people are goofing on the non
Speaker 7: binary character option, but like I do think that's like, hey,
Speaker 7: at least you get to like choose the pronouns that
Speaker 7: you're referred to, and like I think that can make
Speaker 7: someone more comfortable if they're listening. Like even like I
Speaker 7: always hated playing as male characters just because I don't know,
Speaker 7: I just wanted to be a girl in the game.
Speaker 7: So like I understand what kind of gesture that is.
Speaker 7: I So it's like it's like one day you're gonna
Speaker 7: get it. Man, you almost there. I really trying.
Speaker 4: When you said one person is trying, I had an
Speaker 4: image of one person writing and then looking up and
Speaker 4: then every other member of the writing team like holding
Speaker 4: fidget spinners.
Speaker 6: Like one thing I.
Speaker 1: Did, like two about the creative character sort of thing
Speaker 1: at the beginning. It's it's not super in depth, but
Speaker 1: you pick your pronouns, you pick your name. But I
Speaker 1: really liked that you were able to pick your name
Speaker 1: because it was kind of cool to start every Call
Speaker 1: of Duty mission where it would show like like it
Speaker 1: was like Jake Decker, Jake Bell Decker because that's what
Speaker 1: the player character's name is, Bell, and then it would
Speaker 1: like cross him out like they were they were classified. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I don't know, it was just kind of cool
Speaker 1: because it's like I have played probably twenty Call of
Speaker 1: Duty games at this point. I don't know, maybe not
Speaker 1: that many, but I played lots of Call of Duty games,
Speaker 1: and there was something cool about just seeing my name
Speaker 1: show up instead of like soldier Resnov and.
Speaker 5: It always, it always gives you the middle name Bell.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because it's like.
Speaker 5: My new character Tackle.
Speaker 3: I was gonna say, I was gonna say, if your
Speaker 3: surname was.
Speaker 2: Endle Bell.
Speaker 5: Is the episode title. I think we figured it.
Speaker 3: Out quick, quick, tangent.
Speaker 7: My dad's name is Garrick, and in Modern where is this?
Speaker 7: In Modern Warfare, one of the characters is named Grek,
Speaker 7: and he thought that was so freaking cool.
Speaker 1: So so now we all get to last year.
Speaker 7: My dad felt my dad, I was like, I could
Speaker 7: I hate I don't like making it my name.
Speaker 3: I don't like my name.
Speaker 7: So I was like, Dad, what's a cool eighties name?
Speaker 7: And he was like, Agent Orange.
Speaker 3: So I was Orange.
Speaker 7: So that's what I went with because I didn't I
Speaker 7: couldn't think of anything. Yeah, I totally get that, Jake.
Speaker 7: I love seeing my own name in video games.
Speaker 3: I love it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, I mean like it wasn't that, Like I
Speaker 1: don't know, I've seen my name in plenty of games, right,
Speaker 1: like Pokemon. I always picked my name, but it was
Speaker 1: just need to see that. In Call of Duty, Yeah, totally.
Speaker 1: It's always like whatever soldier you are, but this time
Speaker 1: it actually like your name pops up and that kind
Speaker 1: of took me by surprise. That is kind of cool,
Speaker 1: Like I feel a little more connected to what's going
Speaker 1: on here with the explosions and gunfires gun fighters. But
Speaker 1: we should probably talk a little bit about zombies before
Speaker 1: we move on to Demon Souls, because zombies has been
Speaker 1: pretty fun, even though it has been having the bulk
Speaker 1: of the issues, at least from my experience.
Speaker 7: We spend probably no less than fifteen minutes troubleshooting before
Speaker 7: we even get into a match, because.
Speaker 1: And then we'll get into the match and someone will
Speaker 1: get kicked right at the beginning, and we'll back.
Speaker 7: To something well, because half of us are on PS
Speaker 7: five and half are on Xbox Series X. And then
Speaker 7: we were trying to play with Mike Maharty, friend of
Speaker 7: the show, who is on PS four, and that just
Speaker 7: never listened to this show.
Speaker 5: I was not a friend of the show.
Speaker 6: He's just.
Speaker 7: Uh, Mike Mahardy is playing on PS four currently, and
Speaker 7: we couldn't even get in a game with him. I
Speaker 7: think we spent an hour trying to start a game.
Speaker 7: Then eventually we were like, all right, good night, goodbye, Mike.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, we're going.
Speaker 2: On We're going offline. Uh yeah, I got what Tomas.
Speaker 2: Actually see you still online.
Speaker 7: Because Mike left the call and nobody else left the call,
Speaker 7: and we were like, so, uh we're gonna try again.
Speaker 1: And it worked.
Speaker 7: We love you, Mike, even though you don't listen to
Speaker 7: the show so you won't hear this.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 7: So we would have like a lot of trouble with
Speaker 7: Zombies two. So I'm framing it kind of like it's
Speaker 7: a cross play issue, but it's actually not. I had
Speaker 7: the same issue when playing with John Luke and Phil
Speaker 7: Who in the pre release period on PS five, So
Speaker 7: it's just a matchmaking issues. Basically, it's not matchmaking if
Speaker 7: you're solo matchmaking and to multiplayer that works fine in
Speaker 7: my experience. It's partying up that is really difficult. Obviously
Speaker 7: we are because of these difficulties. We've just been using Discord.
Speaker 7: So I have like one earbut in one ear and
Speaker 7: then I cover it with my headphones so I can
Speaker 7: hear the game, and then my ear hurts. So it's
Speaker 7: just it's not elegant, but we figured it out mostly,
Speaker 7: but we're I'm having a lot of fun with Zombies.
Speaker 7: I've I've played a lot of Zombies. I've never felt
Speaker 7: like I was terribly good at it, and I actually
Speaker 7: feel like I'm improving. I also brought in my brother,
Speaker 7: who is like super stupid good at video games to
Speaker 7: like train me, and I feel like that helped a lot.
Speaker 3: But we we.
Speaker 7: Have like a rhythm down now, which is kind of
Speaker 7: like the first hurdle is first hurdle is learning the
Speaker 7: map and like learning the order you need to do
Speaker 7: things in or something like that, making Okay, yeah, the
Speaker 7: first hurdle is part Once you got that, then you
Speaker 7: got to learn the map. We've learned the map, we
Speaker 7: know the steps we need to take, and now it's
Speaker 7: just kind of like how long can we survive? And
Speaker 7: then I think the step after that is like actually
Speaker 7: trying to figure out what the hell is going on.
Speaker 7: I never know what's going on in Zombies, and I
Speaker 7: you know, I know that we're in a former Nazi facility.
Speaker 1: I think, yeah, so this map is actually built around
Speaker 1: the very first Zombies map from World at War, which
Speaker 1: is pretty cool. I don't think it's the first time
Speaker 1: they've revisited this map. I'm pretty sure they've done it
Speaker 1: at least two or three times now. That being said, though,
Speaker 1: I do really like this map because it's not it
Speaker 1: doesn't rely super heavily on that area, like you literally
Speaker 1: just passed through the old area as you try to
Speaker 1: get to other areas. But I also really like it
Speaker 1: because it doesn't feel too big, which is something that
Speaker 1: zombies kind of suffered with later down the line, like
Speaker 1: their only answer to making new maps, which is make
Speaker 1: them bigger. I mean, to be fair, the last one
Speaker 1: I really played was Black Ops Too. Maybe they've kind
Speaker 1: of scaled it back a little bit since the modern warfare.
Speaker 3: Had a stupid big one.
Speaker 7: The Gladiator or what.
Speaker 5: You mean Black Ops four?
Speaker 1: Right? Oh?
Speaker 7: Do I mean?
Speaker 3: I do mean Black Ops for too? Yeah?
Speaker 1: So yeah, I really like the size of this because
Speaker 1: it feels pretty manageable. I've got a good idea in
Speaker 1: my head where everything is, and it just seems to
Speaker 1: work a lot better. Other than that, like, there's some
Speaker 1: good quality of life stuff too that they've added for zombies,
Speaker 1: which makes it fun. Like, honestly, zombies, to me, I
Speaker 1: feel like raids just because they require a lot of
Speaker 1: coordination and whoever you're with, like it's someone you can
Speaker 1: trust and it's a lot of fun I don't know
Speaker 1: doing that.
Speaker 7: And it's also such a good way because there's cross
Speaker 7: progression across all the modes. It's a great way to
Speaker 7: experiment with new weapons. I feel like, like multiplayer, I'm
Speaker 7: so disincentivized from using new weapons because I start out
Speaker 7: with no attachments at level one, and because you're just
Speaker 7: getting stuff out of the mystery, but you're just buying
Speaker 7: weapons off the wall. It's a good way to like
Speaker 7: start getting attachments for your weapons. You can then take
Speaker 7: them into multiplayer and have a little fun with that.
Speaker 7: So I like that aspect. There's like boss zombies. They're
Speaker 7: like made of radioactive weights. Sure farts.
Speaker 1: I got green smoke coming out of it.
Speaker 7: They do according to cars, so according to cartoon rules,
Speaker 7: they might be made of farts.
Speaker 5: Because my thoughts run away.
Speaker 7: And at first we were like, these guys are a nuisance,
Speaker 7: but we figured out how to like handle them better
Speaker 7: and have more success with that. I haven't even talked
Speaker 7: about the dual sense at all. Can I talk about
Speaker 7: the dual sense really quickly? I think a lot of
Speaker 7: people have been talking about it, but you really feel
Speaker 7: it in call of duty with the weapon handling, so
Speaker 7: like left triggers aiming down sites. Depending on the type
Speaker 7: of weapon you're using, and like how hefty it is,
Speaker 7: the resistance will go up. So like a snappier weapon,
Speaker 7: you don't have a lot of resistance on the trigger
Speaker 7: poll for ads, but you have a lot more for
Speaker 7: like a sniper rifle or a larger weapon, which I
Speaker 7: think is really cool. It just adds weight to the weapon.
Speaker 7: And then on the right trigger you have the same
Speaker 7: kind of pull resistance based on the firepower and the recoil,
Speaker 7: and you also get some like almost like reverb like
Speaker 7: haptic feedback for to kind of like emphasize the fire rate.
Speaker 7: And different weapons do feel different to use, and that's
Speaker 7: really cool. Like even if you're like switching between two
Speaker 7: weapons so rapidly you like lose check of which weapon
Speaker 7: you're using, it's easy to figure out, like, oh, I'm
Speaker 7: using my MP five right now because it doesn't feel
Speaker 7: like the AKA, and so I just find that like
Speaker 7: little bit of feedback it helps give the weapons more
Speaker 7: dimension and feel even more distinct than each other from
Speaker 7: each other. And no, it's not like a make or
Speaker 7: break feature to me necessarily, but I do really think
Speaker 7: like it helps inform the weapons I'm going to use,
Speaker 7: and it effect like I just have like a favorite
Speaker 7: feel now. So it's really interesting and I think it's
Speaker 7: done really well. I do think I mentioned this in
Speaker 7: my review, but I do think like, if you're really
Speaker 7: competitive at Call of Duty, you'd probably turn all that
Speaker 7: shit off because it would get in the way of you,
Speaker 7: like the one second millisecond difference or whatever. But if
Speaker 7: you're just here to have a good time, like I am,
Speaker 7: I'm like, cool, the gun feels heavy.
Speaker 1: I really want to try it out because I got
Speaker 1: it on Xbox to play multiplayer with friends. Turns out
Speaker 1: I don't like the multiplayer in this game at all.
Speaker 1: So now I'm like, yeah, I should have got it
Speaker 1: on PlayStation five so I could have tested out those
Speaker 1: those triggers.
Speaker 7: Can you expand on why you don't like it? Because
Speaker 7: I know so for context, Jake plays Modern Warfare like
Speaker 7: multiplayer every day.
Speaker 1: I think it's that I decided, for some reason to
Speaker 1: play a lot of Modern Warfare. I haven't played this
Speaker 1: that much Call of Duty in a very long time,
Speaker 1: so coming to Black Ops it feels like a step
Speaker 1: down in a lot of ways in terms of multiplayer,
Speaker 1: Like I think Zombies is far better than Spec Ops
Speaker 1: in that in modern warfare, and I think the story
Speaker 1: in Black Ops is better. But multiplayer just I don't know,
Speaker 1: it just doesn't feel right. It feels it feels a
Speaker 1: little too stiff. And they take out a lot of
Speaker 1: mechanics that they added in Modern Warfare that I thought
Speaker 1: added a nice touch. For example, for example, you can't
Speaker 1: mount anymore, you can't double tap the sprint button to
Speaker 1: give yourself a little extra boost. There's no fire rates
Speaker 1: selector all these are little things, but for me personally,
Speaker 1: they've added up to just an experience that doesn't feel
Speaker 1: as tight as last year's multiplayer outing did. That being said,
Speaker 1: would I have caught any of this if I, you know,
Speaker 1: didn't play that game almost every single day, like probably not.
Speaker 1: I probably would have played more Black Ops. But the
Speaker 1: other thing with Black Ops to our Black Ops Cold
Speaker 1: War is that I can't get a win, Like I'm
Speaker 1: maybe I'm just bad, but I literally can't get a win.
Speaker 1: I'm at like two and thirty or something like that,
Speaker 1: which is the worst that I've ever had in a
Speaker 1: Call of Duty game. Like I'm not great at Call
Speaker 1: of Duty, but usually I end up with like a
Speaker 1: fifty to fifty win loss ratio. But right now I'm
Speaker 1: at like two and thirty and I'm like, yeah, now
Speaker 1: this game, this game's not for me.
Speaker 2: But I just apparently, Yeah, so you said that there
Speaker 2: are all these differences in how it plays.
Speaker 3: Where does war Zone fit into this?
Speaker 1: Like war Zone is the same, It's been like taken
Speaker 1: from one and put in the other.
Speaker 2: Right, so you can so you can basically just have
Speaker 2: it and you can just access it through like if
Speaker 2: you have both, if you have the riches to have
Speaker 2: a hard drive big enough to have Modern Warfare and
Speaker 2: Black Cod Blobs Cow, I guess, yeah, so you can
Speaker 2: just access that.
Speaker 3: From both games. Yeah, but it is still plays like
Speaker 3: Modern Warfare.
Speaker 1: It just launches war Zone, which is like it's it's
Speaker 1: stand alone kind of a separate game, but not really
Speaker 1: it Yeah.
Speaker 7: It's separate enough that like we reviewed it separately for example,
Speaker 7: so like that's not included in the.
Speaker 3: Black Ops Cold War the COW review.
Speaker 7: And also I can't get it to launch because my
Speaker 7: PS five is having a lot of difficulties differentiating between
Speaker 7: PS four and PS five files, and part of that
Speaker 7: is apparently being unable to download war Zone.
Speaker 3: Oh so you have you've got the download bug.
Speaker 7: I like just can't even it doesn't even like. I've
Speaker 7: tried launching it in the PS five, like doesn't even
Speaker 7: believe it's real.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I had that with Ghost of Sushima. There was
Speaker 2: an up there's an update file that I can't get
Speaker 2: because it gets caught in the download Q bug, And
Speaker 2: so I'll hit it download it says, go to check
Speaker 2: you downloads.
Speaker 3: I got my downloads. It immediately says this is an era.
Speaker 1: Yep.
Speaker 2: I've tried it from my British account. I've tried it
Speaker 2: for my American account. I've put it on the internal
Speaker 2: hard drive. Used on an external hard drive works fine
Speaker 2: on my PS four.
Speaker 3: It's so weird.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 1: See, I haven't had any of these issues because I've
Speaker 1: only been playing Demon Souls on my PlayStation five.
Speaker 6: Two more.
Speaker 1: You have View Demons. What a segue, big picture? You
Speaker 1: gave it a nine.
Speaker 5: How does it make you feel?
Speaker 4: It makes me feel good, makes me feel happy, It
Speaker 4: makes me feel things are okay in the world. Be Yeah,
Speaker 4: it makes me feel loved. By Michael Zaki and and
Speaker 4: the people at Blue Point.
Speaker 7: What about that dirty feet girl.
Speaker 4: Though she's I won't say anything about her feet specifically,
Speaker 4: but she's a nice lady. She helps me out. You know,
Speaker 4: if you're into the feet, more power to you. If
Speaker 4: you're into the dirt on the feet, less power to you.
Speaker 5: Grow up.
Speaker 4: But yeah, it's it's a fun that's the game. I'm
Speaker 4: I'm kind of slightly bemused that the idea that a
Speaker 4: from Software Soul's game is a launch title for a
Speaker 4: new console, let alone it being Demon Souls. Like if
Speaker 4: you had asked me, if you had told me From
Speaker 4: Software is going to release a game as a launch title,
Speaker 4: what is it? I would probably have said Dark Souls
Speaker 4: or maybe Eldern Ring or you know, Bloodborn to or
Speaker 4: Secure or two or something like that.
Speaker 5: But never in a million years what I thought of
Speaker 5: like Demon.
Speaker 4: Souls, because in many ways, it's like the unrefined vision
Speaker 4: of what they eventually kind of work their way towards
Speaker 4: and continue to work the way towards with Dark Souls
Speaker 4: and Blood Born and various other games. It's the it's
Speaker 4: the promordial soup in which all Souls games have been
Speaker 4: created from. But yeah, it's it's an amazing game. But
Speaker 4: I think the most I think it's what I mentioned
Speaker 4: in my review is like the more impressive thing is
Speaker 4: like how well Bluepoint have translated it to the modern day.
Speaker 4: And it's not just ah, they took what they were
Speaker 4: from software, laid out and kind of like polished it
Speaker 4: up and put it out there. No, there's a I
Speaker 4: think people are underestimating amount the amount of their own
Speaker 4: creativity that Bluepoint put into this. You go back to
Speaker 4: Demon Soars and there's a lot of flat textures in
Speaker 4: that game. There's a lot of like just grays and
Speaker 4: greens that are just completely unremarkable in every way, and
Speaker 4: they were like amazing back in the day because they
Speaker 4: helped establish mood and ambience. And back in the day
Speaker 4: it looked nice, but the amount of it was very
Speaker 4: much like a blank canvas for anyone else to come
Speaker 4: up and you know, paint on. And the fact that
Speaker 4: Blue Point came over and they've just added so much
Speaker 4: rich detail into into the game that doesn't feel out
Speaker 4: of place and feels like it was always there and
Speaker 4: was always.
Speaker 5: Meant to be there is like.
Speaker 4: Just an incredible feat And yeah, it's just an example
Speaker 4: incredible and it just speaks to how I don't know,
Speaker 4: I always have this kind of like I don't feel
Speaker 4: bad for them, but I don't know. I just have
Speaker 4: this feeling where Bluepoint gets like just not written off,
Speaker 4: but like put in the bucket, where like they make
Speaker 4: other people's games, and I always worry that there's there's
Speaker 4: some like contingent of people there that are like, yeah,
Speaker 4: but we can make our own stuff too, and like,
Speaker 4: this isn't a game there is There has been rumors
Speaker 4: for many, many many years I think now or months sorry,
Speaker 4: like they are making their own thing. And this is
Speaker 4: an example of like, this studio isn't just good at
Speaker 4: remaking games or rebuilding games. This studio is a genuinely
Speaker 4: creative and talented group of people who understand the art
Speaker 4: of crafting worlds and narratives and that kind of stuff.
Speaker 4: You can't just give this game to anyone and put
Speaker 4: out and let them remake it. The fact that you know,
Speaker 4: we had a HD version of Dark Souls and that
Speaker 4: was perfectly fine, but it was very much by the numbers.
Speaker 4: We've cleaned this up and made it sharp. This is
Speaker 4: this is like one of those restoration paintings, except it's
Speaker 4: done right instead of like that weird messed up face
Speaker 4: one that keeps going around the internet.
Speaker 7: You mean, like the videos that Lucy and I watch
Speaker 7: people who restore.
Speaker 3: Yeah, shout out to bomb Gardner.
Speaker 5: Restoration board restorations.
Speaker 4: This Blue Point Games is the bomb Gardener Restorations of
Speaker 4: the games industry.
Speaker 5: So that's where we're at.
Speaker 4: And it's just like phenomena in terms of mood tone,
Speaker 4: just and a great example of Sony.
Speaker 5: It reflects really well on Sony.
Speaker 4: I think, just an understanding of what is going to
Speaker 4: entice the broadest market of gamers, like broadest group of gamers,
Speaker 4: like having you imagine they want to hit the major
Speaker 4: milestones right or major tastes when they release a new console.
Speaker 4: There's a platformer there, there's third party shooters, there's you know,
Speaker 4: a racing game on the way. And the fact that
Speaker 4: Souls is now reached the point where it's an important
Speaker 4: genre to have represented when you're launching a new console.
Speaker 4: Is it's just music to my ears as someone who
Speaker 4: imported Demon Souls from Asia and like took a chance
Speaker 4: on it when it first came out and has been
Speaker 4: like singing its praises since that day. Like for it
Speaker 4: to reach this far, it's just like it's surreal and amazing.
Speaker 4: I'm not saying like.
Speaker 5: Oh I was first first.
Speaker 4: I'm not first person on on YouTube videos, but like first,
Speaker 4: I was there at the start and.
Speaker 5: Like it genuinely. It makes me sentimental to like see
Speaker 5: where it's come.
Speaker 4: And I think about all that time that I went
Speaker 4: through trying to convince people that it was amazing and
Speaker 4: amazing genre to check out and like it was something
Speaker 4: that was going to change video games, and to reach
Speaker 4: the point now where it has and it's now, you know,
Speaker 4: triple A game being sold alongside a brand new PlayStation,
Speaker 4: it's just phenomenal.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think it's honestly the perfect game to
Speaker 1: launch a console with because the people who want that
Speaker 1: game are clamoring for it, right, Like they're gonna want
Speaker 1: to go out and buy a console any way they
Speaker 1: can so they can play it. Sure, it's not quite
Speaker 1: a game for everyone, but like I said, I think
Speaker 1: the people who are interested are going to make sure
Speaker 1: to get a PlayStation to get it, and it makes
Speaker 1: more sense to launch that now. I feel like than
Speaker 1: I don't know, a couple of years down the line,
Speaker 1: when you know there's Horizon and these other like Triple
Speaker 1: A more broad appeal Sony Games, which is why I
Speaker 1: think it was like a super smart move to come
Speaker 1: out swinging with that game. And it also, just like
Speaker 1: you're saying, it really does appeal to I don't want
Speaker 1: to say the hardcore fans, but the early adopters of
Speaker 1: these consoles. That being said, Lucy, you've been playing it too,
Speaker 1: have you been getting.
Speaker 3: On I'm doing doing well.
Speaker 2: So just as Callie was talking about the Jewel Sense
Speaker 2: in with regard to cod Blobs Cow, the Jewel Sense
Speaker 2: is really good in Demon Souls and now, Jake, you've just
Speaker 2: been working on a feature all about it.
Speaker 3: But like Demon Souls for me was.
Speaker 2: The game where I thought so I thought playing Miles
Speaker 2: Morales like was a really great like use case for
Speaker 2: the headset and for through the audio and for the
Speaker 2: Jewel Sense, And then you played Demon Souls and the
Speaker 2: moment that really got me. I was in the mindes
Speaker 2: Stonefang and there are these little orbs that explode on
Speaker 2: if you get too near them, and I just wasn't
Speaker 2: paying attention. I think I was like checking my phone
Speaker 2: because I thought I'd cleared all the areas, like everyone
Speaker 2: out of the area, and this mine car rolled up
Speaker 2: and like stopped next to me, and then it exploded,
Speaker 2: and it exploded with such ferocity that like I genuinely
Speaker 2: like jumped because the Jewel Sense just goes like like
Speaker 2: well silently because it doesn't make any sound, but like
Speaker 2: the Jewel Sense just like vibrated so violently, and then
Speaker 2: the sound coming through the headphones as well, because like
Speaker 2: Demon Souls, I will absolutely just play with my headset
Speaker 2: on because it just sounds so good and it's really good. Tam,
Speaker 2: You're talking about it in something last week, I can't
Speaker 2: remember if it was it was Gen Next, and you
Speaker 2: were saying that like you could hear enemies with such
Speaker 2: pinpoint accuracy. And so I'm at the point now where
Speaker 2: I don't even I'm not even looking at the notes
Speaker 2: on the ground that other players have left. I'm specifically
Speaker 2: listening out for enemies hiding around corners or being in
Speaker 2: the dark or something, because it's it's it's really good.
Speaker 3: And also like it looks phenomenal.
Speaker 2: Like there's a you you when you load into the game, Uh,
Speaker 2: you're kind of in this dilapidated tunnel and there's all
Speaker 2: these ponds gum and like I was just call me
Speaker 2: ye pond scum, and I was just walking up and
Speaker 2: down and like seeing how the pond scum was reacting
Speaker 2: to you colliding.
Speaker 3: With it, and it's just like so good.
Speaker 2: The raid tracing so good, the shadows, the audio work,
Speaker 2: it's all really really good. And then on top of
Speaker 2: it all, this is my first experience with Demon Souls,
Speaker 2: but I have the I feel like I have the
Speaker 2: confidence because I've played other Souls born games. Yeah, it's
Speaker 2: something really special, so I have In terms of where
Speaker 2: I'm at with the game, just did the Dragon God
Speaker 2: and I'm still in that area, but I might go
Speaker 2: back to the bit behind the Tower.
Speaker 1: Night, having having not played the original, Lucy, do you
Speaker 1: think it holds up pretty well? Does it feel like
Speaker 1: a game from what two thousand and seven?
Speaker 3: No, it doesn't, I don't think so. I I'm really
Speaker 3: enjoying it.
Speaker 2: But I wonder if I would feel that way if
Speaker 2: I hadn't played like Dark Souls. But I'm I also
Speaker 2: feel like I'm giving myself a slightly easier time of
Speaker 2: it because I picked the Royalty class because I obviously
Speaker 2: did some research.
Speaker 1: And I did magicians so yeah.
Speaker 3: Which is so like Royalty Class.
Speaker 2: If you are considering playing and it's your first one,
Speaker 2: like I would definitely recommend you get a really great
Speaker 2: magic spell called Soul Arrow, and you also get a
Speaker 2: ring that slowly regenerates your MP over time.
Speaker 4: So yeah, most people go for the Night Class because
Speaker 4: it's like it's like the basic one. The Night Class
Speaker 4: is tricky, like it's you're You're in for a bit
Speaker 4: of a strug. That's what I'm playing as, and it's
Speaker 4: like you need to be on point with it. But
Speaker 4: like magic is magic is almost like magic is opy
Speaker 4: in Demon Souls. But the Royalty Class is like a
Speaker 4: nice balance of both worlds where you can get upper
Speaker 4: close and do the physical combat, but if.
Speaker 5: You want to, you know, play it safe, you can
Speaker 5: do their magic stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because I've got a weapon that scales with magic.
Speaker 2: So I'm having I'm having a nice, like balanced time.
Speaker 2: There's also that it's also the first Souls game I've
Speaker 2: ever played with magic. I've never done that before, and
Speaker 2: so yeah, I'm really enjoying it. I'm having a lovely time.
Speaker 4: One of the things that I love about this game
Speaker 4: is there's right now there's an influx of people playing
Speaker 4: the game because there's you know, there's a limited amount
Speaker 4: of PlayStation five games out, but it means that the
Speaker 4: messaging system is just absolutely singing like it's working as
Speaker 4: as from software wanted it to work but could never
Speaker 4: make it work because nobody played the original, like no
Speaker 4: one played there. There was so few messages around and
Speaker 4: it never worked. So now what happens is like I'm
Speaker 4: leaving more messages than I've ever left. I'm leaving messages everywhere.
Speaker 4: It's been like welcoming people into areas, telling them about
Speaker 4: secrets and that kind of stuff.
Speaker 3: And it's the real demon soul starts here.
Speaker 4: Yeah like or even like, yeah, be careful here, you
Speaker 4: know a secret, et cetera, et cetera. And what happens
Speaker 4: is if you if you interact with a message, you
Speaker 4: can rate it like fine or foul or whatever it
Speaker 4: may be. If you get rated fine, it refills your health.
Speaker 4: And so the amount of times I have had it,
Speaker 4: I had it happened once where a boss was almost
Speaker 4: about to kill me, like the boss swung at me
Speaker 4: and as it was about to hit a message, one
Speaker 4: of my messages got rated fine and it filled my
Speaker 4: health and it saved me. Like the amount of times
Speaker 4: that has happened in the game, it's just been incredible,
Speaker 4: and like that is like one of the most memorable
Speaker 4: gaming experiences of the year for me. I had I
Speaker 4: went to Shrine of Storms and those fuck those goddamn
Speaker 4: skeletons how much I played these games, Like those skeletons
Speaker 4: are so annoying, but like they have almost killed me
Speaker 4: so many times because the mantare's in the sky as well,
Speaker 4: fire like arrows at you. They're so bad you need
Speaker 4: the thief string and you can just like ignore them.
Speaker 4: But like the like every time the skeleton has almost
Speaker 4: killed me, like so many times, my health has just
Speaker 4: reached out rated right at the right time.
Speaker 6: I'm like, thank God.
Speaker 2: My favorite thing is that they've clearly because the cool
Speaker 2: way that Blue I'm actually not sure if they've done
Speaker 2: it for this one, but the way they remade Shadow
Speaker 2: of the Classes, like they have the original game running
Speaker 2: and then they have it running simultaneously as they're making
Speaker 2: it within the Blue Point engine, so they take they
Speaker 2: actually like take a lot of the original code. So
Speaker 2: for example, in Shadow of the Classes, the like the
Speaker 2: belt around Wander is the original like it's the original
Speaker 2: animations from the Belt that was originally made by Team,
Speaker 2: So I wonder if this is a similar quirk. But
Speaker 2: I've noticed that, like they didn't anticipate so many people
Speaker 2: rating notes, and there's a small bug where if you
Speaker 2: have ratings that are triple digits, it crosses over with
Speaker 2: the text because it's clearly like they thought not that
Speaker 2: many people would rate stuff. But all like most of
Speaker 2: the notes I've seen, Yeah, most of the notes I've
Speaker 2: seen are like most of the notes have been appraised
Speaker 2: in trouble digits because it's just so many people the.
Speaker 4: Amount of times. So I've gone into an area that
Speaker 4: i've known like is difficult or like a boss arena
Speaker 4: once it's finished, and just found the note I'm proud
Speaker 4: of you, Like in the game, it's just so good,
Speaker 4: like you work your way through I don't know, Tower
Speaker 4: of Latria and then it's just I'm proud of you
Speaker 4: and you're like thank you.
Speaker 2: That's I mean, that's where I'm at right now. That
Speaker 2: really really far and then I mind killed me.
Speaker 5: So I usually leave Latria for loss.
Speaker 3: Oh really I should I should have hit you up.
Speaker 3: They should have texted you.
Speaker 1: Well, Anyway, with that, let's head to our listener questions
Speaker 1: this week.
Speaker 6: And we are back.
Speaker 1: But before we get into listener questions, joining me right
Speaker 1: now is Matt Elfring.
Speaker 6: Hi and Chris Hello.
Speaker 1: Now, you two host Wrestle Buddies Game Spots Wrestling podcast,
Speaker 1: and you've joined because there is a ton of wrestling
Speaker 1: video game news and I know nothing about any of
Speaker 1: that stuff. So I brought you guys here to help
Speaker 1: me unpack all of these games because there are a few. Right,
Speaker 1: I thought there was just one, but I've been told
Speaker 1: that there's more.
Speaker 8: It would be great if there was just one. If
Speaker 8: they could take all three of these games and collapse
Speaker 8: them into one title instead of taking one game that
Speaker 8: just parting it out to different places to charge me money,
Speaker 8: that would be great.
Speaker 6: I'd like to start with the weirdest one just and
Speaker 6: it's it's a mobile game, and oddly it makes the
Speaker 6: most sense to me.
Speaker 1: I'll say that it's like before before we get into that,
Speaker 1: I do want you guys to introduce yourself, because I
Speaker 1: did say you guys host Wrestle Buddies. But Matt Elfring,
Speaker 1: how long have you been with game Spot, What what
Speaker 1: kind of stuff do you cover, what games do you play?
Speaker 3: Give us the rundown.
Speaker 6: Well, I I'm coming up on my fifth year this
Speaker 6: December of mark five years with game Spot on the
Speaker 6: Entertainment section. I am the news editor of the Entertainment section.
Speaker 6: I yell about news a lot, and movies and TV
Speaker 6: and wrestling, I guess obviously. Currently, right now, the PlayStation
Speaker 6: five is eating my life. I am finally playing Spider Man,
Speaker 6: the remastered version, and I'll be hitting up Miles Morales.
Speaker 6: And the one thing that I was super duper excited
Speaker 6: to start playing that I've been kind of tinkering with
Speaker 6: is Fall Guys, because I'm watching a lot of people
Speaker 6: play Fall Guys on YouTube and I'm just jealous and
Speaker 6: half fomo.
Speaker 1: Yeah it's not on Xbox.
Speaker 6: Huh No, it's not on Xbox. No switch My PC
Speaker 6: can't run. It's garbage. All guys is born to be
Speaker 6: a switch game. I don't understand.
Speaker 1: Yeah, seriously, how about you, Chris.
Speaker 8: I've been with game Spot three issu years now. I
Speaker 8: cover movies, TV, theme parks, wrestling, all the good stuff. Actually,
Speaker 8: today just started my new game plus of Spider Man
Speaker 8: Miles Morales. I finished it last night and immediately started
Speaker 8: the game over again because I want that cat, want
Speaker 8: that cat. Other games I play. You and the audio
Speaker 8: world can't see this, but I do have an NBA
Speaker 8: jam Arcade cabinet behind me, just like Matt has one
Speaker 8: behind him. So that is how I've been spending a
Speaker 8: lot of my spare time recently.
Speaker 1: So you guys are very good friends. Did you meet
Speaker 1: through GameSpot or have you known each other longer than that?
Speaker 6: I think we just became best friends from working together.
Speaker 8: Okay, Like, like Matt was already here when I started, obviously,
Speaker 8: and like day one, I was like, I think I
Speaker 8: like this guy.
Speaker 6: This guy, I feel like he's on my level. We
Speaker 6: both bought I think like the day Chris you bought
Speaker 6: the one up arcade, we played like two games. Maybe
Speaker 6: yes we did. I decimated you. Yes you did.
Speaker 1: Okay, Well, now that our audience knows who you guys are,
Speaker 1: they know about wrest buddies, you're tasting games and what
Speaker 1: you do for game Spot. Now it's time to get
Speaker 1: into the meat of the discussion. What are these aw
Speaker 1: games all about? What's the mobile one? Let's start with
Speaker 1: that one. There's let's start with but one of the
Speaker 1: mobile the.
Speaker 6: One that Chris things make sense and I think is crazy.
Speaker 1: It is.
Speaker 6: It's just a mobile casino game where you play blackjat
Speaker 6: slots poker, and then it just has like a W
Speaker 6: stamps on it and it plays AW music. It's just
Speaker 6: like a weirdly licensed game that makes to me, makes
Speaker 6: no sense because wrestling and casinos. I know, AW has
Speaker 6: like a pay per view that's kind of modeled after casinos,
Speaker 6: but it still makes no sense. It's very very weird. Yeah.
Speaker 8: Well, well, meanwhile, on for my money, like AAW has
Speaker 8: been very like a lot of its bigger events have
Speaker 8: been very like gambling centric. Also, like I from a
Speaker 8: business point of view, where like in a pandemic when
Speaker 8: wrestling shows are televised every week but can't have live audiences, really,
Speaker 8: that's a lot of lost revenue. They got to make
Speaker 8: up somewhere. So make them play blackjack?
Speaker 6: Baby?
Speaker 1: How does I imagine there are micro transactions? Because obviously you
Speaker 1: can't have gambling on an electronic game, but you know,
Speaker 1: micro transactions, Like, how does that work?
Speaker 6: Do we know?
Speaker 8: No, that's the weird thing. All they said was like
Speaker 8: play blackjack, you can maybe win like authentic a W merchandise.
Speaker 6: But they're like, without a doubt, there's gonna be some
Speaker 6: sort of weird currency that you're gonna have to spend
Speaker 6: real life money on to get all that.
Speaker 8: Yeah, by like like young buck Bucks. Young Bucks are
Speaker 8: a tag team there.
Speaker 1: Jacob, all right, So that's that's one game that's kind
Speaker 1: of odd that it's a it's a blackjack game just
Speaker 1: with a W branding on it. How about the other
Speaker 1: mobile game?
Speaker 6: This is the good one.
Speaker 8: This is the one I like, I'm personally most excited about.
Speaker 8: Wrestling fans who game classically love a good general manager mode,
Speaker 8: which is essentially you become the booker of the wrestling show.
Speaker 8: You like pick who's gonna fight who you sometimes determine
Speaker 8: the winner, and the whole point of the game is
Speaker 8: to like manage morale in the locker room, audience, attendance, money,
Speaker 8: like all of the real boring stuff in wrestling. But
Speaker 8: like we love it, uh and now aw is really
Speaker 8: is putting together just a general manager mode app where
Speaker 8: supposedly you might be able to fight against your friends,
Speaker 8: which is what Matt and I want to do. Yes,
Speaker 8: but like it's essentially you're managing the roster. You're booking
Speaker 8: the cards and you're just essentially playing You're playing billionaire
Speaker 8: Tony Kahm, the guy who owns AW. You're just taking
Speaker 8: his job.
Speaker 6: It's it's if you've been paying attention to like WWE's
Speaker 6: Up Up, Down Down YouTube channel. Xavier Woods has done
Speaker 6: the GM mode with I think it's Ron SmackDown two
Speaker 6: thousand and seven. They're playing Chris is not Kent. I
Speaker 6: think it's two six, two thousand and six, two don six.
Speaker 6: They've been doing that for about a year and it's
Speaker 6: really kind of heightened the popular and the want for
Speaker 6: wrestling fans to play a new GM mode. Unfortunately, WWE
Speaker 6: Gaming through two K and Visual Concepts have not been
Speaker 6: doing a General Manager Mode. So AW is trying to
Speaker 6: kind of fill a void that wrestling fans really want
Speaker 6: right now, Like me, I want. I mean, I busted
Speaker 6: out my old three sixty to play I think I
Speaker 6: had two thousand and seven, two thousand and eight. Yeah,
Speaker 6: and when you know, playing GM mode by myself on
Speaker 6: a really loud Xbox three sixty from fifteen years ago.
Speaker 6: But yeah, the promise of being able to play like
Speaker 6: the sort of a new updated version of this mode
Speaker 6: that we love very much. But is as a game
Speaker 6: that's on your smartphone and you can hopefully connect to
Speaker 6: your friend who's also on my smartphone, you can have
Speaker 6: like a competing season of whatever against each other. Like
Speaker 6: that is exactly what I want.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that sounds pretty neat because on paper that stuff
Speaker 1: doesn't sound super interesting, right but when but you know,
Speaker 1: people love Football Manager every year and they jump on that,
Speaker 1: and people are super into the Like I have some
Speaker 1: friends on my Steam high rove played like hundreds of
Speaker 1: hours of those games, so I definitely get the appeal.
Speaker 1: It's definitely not for everyone, but like the thought of
Speaker 1: even if somebody's not super into wrestling, but the thought of,
Speaker 1: like you know, building up a roster and scheduling out
Speaker 1: a season and having my fighters fight a friend sounds
Speaker 1: that's pretty enticing to me.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I'm very Yeah, I'm very excited about that. Unfortunately, uh,
Speaker 8: we don't know when that's actually going to come out.
Speaker 8: The beauty of all these we don't know when any
Speaker 8: of them are coming out, well except we know it
Speaker 8: was the Winter the Casino is the first one coming out. Okay,
Speaker 8: everything else the lead of an interesting one. Yeah, spend
Speaker 8: your Christmas playing Blackjack alone.
Speaker 6: I will, I will, all.
Speaker 1: Right, So the last one's the big one, right. This
Speaker 1: is the wrestling game.
Speaker 8: Yeah, this is this is the wrestling name that has
Speaker 8: actual wrestling in it.
Speaker 6: You remember Yuke's good old Yukes. They made the classic
Speaker 6: wrestling video games back in the day, usually alongside th HQ.
Speaker 6: YUS has teamed up with aw to make a new
Speaker 6: wrestling game that they showed us a two minute trailer
Speaker 6: roughly of Kenny Omega and Chris Jericho fighting. It's kind
Speaker 6: of I wouldn't say cartoonish models, but it feels kind
Speaker 6: of like clayish, not.
Speaker 8: Like yeah, it felt it's it's close enough to just
Speaker 8: not be real. Like it looks sort of realistic until
Speaker 8: you like look at it hard and you're like, oh no,
Speaker 8: Like these are this is a very sort of almost
Speaker 8: like fantasy is the wrong word, but they're very they're
Speaker 8: very played up. They're extra muscular, like they have very
Speaker 8: like I feel like, especially around the fantasy have very
Speaker 8: soft features and it just it looks different than what
Speaker 8: WWE is offering every year, Like every your WWE when
Speaker 8: they release one of their mainline games, tries to make
Speaker 8: the models look as close to real as possible, will
Speaker 8: say for the terrible long hair we always get, but
Speaker 8: like this is clearly going. These are very stylized. They're
Speaker 8: trying to sort of be their own thing. They've hired Yukes,
Speaker 8: who is responsible for yeah, the most beloved wrestling games
Speaker 8: on Nintendo sixty four, especially No Mercy, WrestleMania two thousand,
Speaker 8: WCWNW Revenge, Like wrestling nerds love these games, and now
Speaker 8: that company is working with AAW And they've also enlisted
Speaker 8: the director of No Mercy, Gato, who is They haven't
Speaker 8: said what he's doing with the game, They just said
Speaker 8: he's involved, and then they had a video of him
Speaker 8: talking about how much he loves Kenny Omega, which is great,
Speaker 8: Like we all love Kenny Omega. But so yeah, we're
Speaker 8: not entirely sure. But the one thing we know is
Speaker 8: for sure happening in the game, because they put it
Speaker 8: in the trailer, is in your gender fights, so man
Speaker 8: versus woman something just not on AW television, definitely allowed
Speaker 8: in the AW.
Speaker 1: So do you think wrestling fans are going to be
Speaker 1: annoyed that this game is taking a less realistic approach?
Speaker 1: Maybe realistic's not the right word, but like you know,
Speaker 1: the was it. The two K games kind of feature
Speaker 1: realistic models, and this is a little more, like you said,
Speaker 1: not not fantasy, but unrealistic.
Speaker 6: I think we're as a wrestling fan and a video
Speaker 6: game enthusiast myself, I'm looking for something new, a breath
Speaker 6: of fresh air. We had WWE Battlegrounds come out past
Speaker 6: doc October time means nothing anymore, and that was an
Speaker 6: overly stylized game, but it didn't really fill that that
Speaker 6: void of, you know, something fun that's not just simulation.
Speaker 6: Simulation wrestling is great, but I don't want every wrestling
Speaker 6: game to be simulation. I want to have that kind
Speaker 6: of fun feeling I had, you know, at my buddy's house,
Speaker 6: like early college, like let's play you know, n WCWNW
Speaker 6: or Revenge like I'm going to be signed guy Lodi
Speaker 6: that's a real wrestling character. Or Disco Inferno he likes Disco.
Speaker 6: You kind of want that fun, you know, nostalgic feeling.
Speaker 6: And I guess for me like I have rose colored
Speaker 6: glasses on when it comes to Yukes just in general.
Speaker 6: So I'm excited, but I just I want to see
Speaker 6: something new. AW is already as a wrestling promotion has
Speaker 6: already offered something new to wrestling fans, and sure, I'll
Speaker 6: take a new game that's not just you know, we
Speaker 6: scanned a guy for seventeen hours to get every beard
Speaker 6: stubble correct. You're gonna love it. I'm also excited about
Speaker 6: the game.
Speaker 8: But my counterpoint to that is they have AW Another
Speaker 8: thing AW has had is they're like us. They are
Speaker 8: made up a bunch of wrestling nerds who are overly
Speaker 8: nostalgic for things. So a lot of a lot of
Speaker 8: times we see in their programming relies on like sort
Speaker 8: of pointing and nodding at things that happened before them
Speaker 8: enlisting the company and the director of the best Wrestling
Speaker 8: Game twenty years ago. I hope, I hope it's evolved
Speaker 8: like I as stylized and not not necessarily realistic. As
Speaker 8: the footage we saw, which they stressed was rough. Footage looked.
Speaker 8: It still looked cool, like it looked fun. But as
Speaker 8: a wrestling fan and also a video game enthusiast, we're
Speaker 8: never happy about anything. Everything we're going to critique and
Speaker 8: the thing it can look however it wants it has
Speaker 8: to be. It's all about the controls, like it is
Speaker 8: so easy to screw up controls in a wrestling game.
Speaker 8: Trust me, two k's done it a lot so many
Speaker 8: times over the years, and before then, THHQ did it
Speaker 8: a lot. It's just like you have to the controls
Speaker 8: need to be easy enough to just pick up and play,
Speaker 8: but have sort of a depth to them for where
Speaker 8: you can as you move along and get more comfortable
Speaker 8: and then you could pull off more and more crazy things.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I was going to ask, because the last couple two
Speaker 1: K wrestling games have been borderline broken, does that make
Speaker 1: you guys nervous at all?
Speaker 8: Well, there's a whole Matt and I talk about this
Speaker 8: a lot because the one they the last big one
Speaker 8: was WWE two K twenty, which had I think a
Speaker 8: now legendary blaze of fire release where just everything went
Speaker 8: as wrong as possible. And thankfully they've done a lot,
Speaker 8: They've done a lot of patching in the meantime, and
Speaker 8: like it's now the wrestling game playable playing. Yeah it's
Speaker 8: playable now. It's not perfect by any means, but yeah,
Speaker 8: I do at the very least like that where it's
Speaker 8: not this isn't a two K product, this isn't a
Speaker 8: WWE sort of a WW Universe product. This is something different.
Speaker 8: It's gonna have a completely different roster of people to
Speaker 8: play with. Hopefully it'll have just as good, if not better,
Speaker 8: a creation suite, because what is a wrestling game if
Speaker 8: you can't make wrestlers that look like you and your
Speaker 8: friends and they hit each other with chairs.
Speaker 1: That's that's why I always played wrestling games, just so
Speaker 1: I could make ridiculous characters that look like just giant
Speaker 1: pieces of brack that would fight other carrots or something
Speaker 1: you would love.
Speaker 8: W W two K twenty then, because it comes in
Speaker 8: package with a wrestler that's literally Ribs. Yes, it's like
Speaker 8: barbecue Ribs. It's rib and Ribby's got an entrance song
Speaker 8: and a video package and everything.
Speaker 6: What you should do is just get you get two
Speaker 6: K twenty on the Xbox, and then it will just
Speaker 6: give you. Chris and I have uploaded a ton of
Speaker 6: wrestlers already. They just download. You can have the real
Speaker 6: version of me or the eighties glam version of me.
Speaker 6: Guess what play with the most own them both Tiger Forest,
Speaker 6: matt Elfring.
Speaker 1: Is there is there a release date on this game?
Speaker 6: Coming soon?
Speaker 8: Wink Yeah, just coming soon I'm I well, and obviously
Speaker 8: Matt and I are more on the entertainment side of
Speaker 8: the game side. But like, from what I understand, developing
Speaker 8: a video game from the ground up takes a lot
Speaker 8: of time. And AW just celebrated its one year anniversary,
Speaker 8: so like, I'm thinking at least a year, probably.
Speaker 6: Because Yux has only been with AW, to the best
Speaker 6: of our knowledge for a year because they left. Uh
Speaker 6: they left and a half ago.
Speaker 8: Uh So yeah, it'll be it'll be interesting to see
Speaker 8: when I I just want it. I want new wrestling games.
Speaker 8: I'll play any of them, even if they're terrible. I'll
Speaker 8: still play them because, like, yeah, like wrestling fans. Like
Speaker 8: there's a reason that wrestling fans are called marks. We're
Speaker 8: the easiest, most sucker marks on the planet. We will
Speaker 8: buy anything. I look, as Matt knows, I'm gonna download
Speaker 8: the Casino app. I'm gonna play it for at least
Speaker 8: an hour. I'm gonna hold off on that one good luck,
Speaker 8: and then I think I kind of already know the
Speaker 8: answer to this.
Speaker 1: But there what's the ranking between these three games in
Speaker 1: terms of excitement levels?
Speaker 5: For you guys?
Speaker 1: Personally, I think The Manager is my favorite and then
Speaker 1: the actual wrestling game, and then like way way, way,
Speaker 1: way way down, there might be the Blackjack game.
Speaker 6: At this point, I might be with you, Jacob. Yeah,
Speaker 6: I think I'm gonna put General Manager number one. It's
Speaker 6: only because I know we all know so little about
Speaker 6: the console game.
Speaker 7: Uh.
Speaker 6: If I knew a little bit more about the game,
Speaker 6: more than that one minute trailer, sure, But right now
Speaker 6: General Manager moment, I know enough about it where I'm like,
Speaker 6: I will be playing this like all day. Sorry, work,
Speaker 6: I'm playing General I should be writing like it's on
Speaker 6: my phone. That's perfect. That's all I could ever want
Speaker 6: in the world. So yeah, that that is. That is
Speaker 6: what I'm like, I do. I don't care about the
Speaker 6: Casino one. I'll play it. I also have on my phone.
Speaker 8: I have WWE Tetris, I have WWE like card Fight,
Speaker 8: I have I have so many Build the Title. I
Speaker 8: have so many dumb wrestling games on my phone already.
Speaker 8: There's no way I'm not going to download the other
Speaker 8: new ones that are. Do you just have a folder
Speaker 8: full of all your Yeah, yeah, it's labeled procrastination. Yeah,
Speaker 8: it's labeled procrastination, and that's exactly what it's there.
Speaker 1: For well, if you all want to hear more about
Speaker 1: all of this wrestling goodness, you can check out wrestle Buddies,
Speaker 1: which is on iTunes, Spotify, pretty much anywhere that's got
Speaker 1: podcast you can find. But before I let you guys go,
Speaker 1: is there anything else you guys want to plug work
Speaker 1: that might be coming up? Ways people can follow you,
Speaker 1: Twitter handles, whatever it might be. Chris, why don't you
Speaker 1: start with that?
Speaker 8: I am at Chris Hayner. It's very easy on all
Speaker 8: of the social media. It's hr s h A Y
Speaker 8: N E R. And Yeah, like you said, we got
Speaker 8: new episodes of wrestle Buddies every Thursday. If you want
Speaker 8: to hear people talk about things like the time Hulk
Speaker 8: can open to post restaurant, or when we talk to
Speaker 8: actual WWE wrestlers about some of the dumb stuff in wrestling,
Speaker 8: this is the podcast for you.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I don't think we ever talked about anything contemporary.
Speaker 6: We're always talking about something weird from the nineties, and
Speaker 6: then also interviewing someone that's currently wrestling about something from
Speaker 6: the nineties.
Speaker 8: Yeah, next week, like I think next Yeah, next week
Speaker 8: we're talking about the time a giant turkey hatched on
Speaker 8: ww television cuz Thanksgiving.
Speaker 1: I enjoy when you guys bring in staff members to
Speaker 1: read out lines.
Speaker 6: Oh you're talking about Wrestle Peace Theater.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 8: Yeah, we bring a lot of class to the show
Speaker 8: and podcasting. I think we're trying to the rhetoric of
Speaker 8: professional wrestling podcasting.
Speaker 6: I think you're the only person after Dark that has
Speaker 6: not done that yet. That means you're on deck. Yeah,
Speaker 6: I think you're on No, send me the lines. I
Speaker 6: got it the episode.
Speaker 1: Anyway, Thank you guys, and uh, we're back with listener
Speaker 1: questions right after this. All right, and we are back
Speaker 1: with listener questions. If you've got a question for us,
Speaker 1: you can email us at after Dark podcast at GameSpot
Speaker 1: dot com, or you can join our discord by dming
Speaker 1: myself and I will, or just emailing the that email
Speaker 1: address and we'll get you right in. First question is
Speaker 1: from Maria on discord, Kelly, do you want to read
Speaker 1: this one?
Speaker 7: It seems like the switch in combat style for Yakaza
Speaker 7: has made a long standing series feel like a whole
Speaker 7: new experience. Are there any other game series you think
Speaker 7: could benefit from changing the way they play?
Speaker 2: Oh, speaking of I just got to the part where
Speaker 2: like you have a second party member in Yaza and
Speaker 2: the combats started to sing.
Speaker 3: That's a really good question, Maria. Yeah, it's a good question,
Speaker 3: like a long standing series.
Speaker 2: What if you made like a I know, because I
Speaker 2: know Gears had Gears Tactics, So I'm like, what the
Speaker 2: what if you had an RTS of Call of Duty?
Speaker 2: But I feel like that's not an exciting it.
Speaker 7: Was Halo worst.
Speaker 5: Make hm.
Speaker 7: I mean, Yakaza was such a good pick because I
Speaker 7: never really connected with that combat, the original combat system,
Speaker 7: Like I would say, like it's not the best, it's
Speaker 7: not the strongest, So like it's such a it's such
Speaker 7: a good pick. And now I'm struggling to think of
Speaker 7: another one that has like bothered me recently or where
Speaker 7: I felt like it was.
Speaker 2: I mean I'm big into Yeah, I'm big into games,
Speaker 2: like Final Fantasy has obviously done it with the theater.
Speaker 3: What god? That is the worst.
Speaker 2: Portmanteau, And like now Kingdom Hearts is at it making
Speaker 2: like musical games what do you call them? Rhythm action games? Yeah,
Speaker 2: like rhythm games. So I you know, I applaud them
Speaker 2: for trying, and I think I think THEATRYTHM was definitely
Speaker 2: well better received than unfortunately Kingdom Hearts was.
Speaker 5: Rhythm.
Speaker 2: I'm just trying to think, like, if you give me
Speaker 2: a franchise, I will. That's the thing where I'm getting
Speaker 2: I've had half a white claw.
Speaker 3: I'm very tired.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, just the branch off Call of Duty.
Speaker 1: After playing Black Cold War, I'd really like a not
Speaker 1: a point and click adventure, like still the first person,
Speaker 1: but like a first person adventure game where it's a
Speaker 1: little more less focused on the shooting and moron just
Speaker 1: talking to people solving clues. Maybe it wouldn't be Call
Speaker 1: of Duty, but after playing Cold War and having those
Speaker 1: those safe house sections and the stuff with the clues
Speaker 1: and codes and whatnot, like, I thought that was pretty compelling.
Speaker 1: I don't know if I'd want to play that for
Speaker 1: an entire game, but that could make for an interesting
Speaker 1: Call of Duty experience, or maybe even just a Call
Speaker 1: of Duty that's more like hit Man in a way,
Speaker 1: because there is a mission in the new Call of
Speaker 1: Duty game that is a bit reminiscent of hit Man
Speaker 1: in terms of there's a character that you can kill,
Speaker 1: and there are different ways you can set up this
Speaker 1: kill or you don't have to kill and you have
Speaker 1: to take something from them. But like that mission was
Speaker 1: super interesting. In like, an entire Call of Duty game
Speaker 1: that's kind of based around that, I think would be
Speaker 1: pretty cool.
Speaker 7: I'm so tired that I totally let TAM's joke die
Speaker 7: about a rhythm call of duty game, but I was
Speaker 7: going to say that making a gunshot montage on YouTube
Speaker 7: in twenty ten to an Avenge Sevenfold song was the
Speaker 7: call of Duty rhythm game, So damn.
Speaker 3: Been there.
Speaker 5: Oh that'd be pretty good.
Speaker 7: Honestly, I would play literally anything that was like, oh,
Speaker 7: now it's a city builder, like I want. The only
Speaker 7: reason I want to I've never played an Assassin's Creed game.
Speaker 7: The only reason I want to play Valhalla is because
Speaker 7: of the settlement stuff. But like, I would like it
Speaker 7: a lot more if it was just building a Viking
Speaker 7: settlement that's the whole game.
Speaker 1: What about like a Pokemon League manager where you're kind
Speaker 1: of the head of the league and you pick gym
Speaker 1: leaders and pick the Pokemon they're going to use, and
Speaker 1: basically you're just trying to stop trainers from getting to
Speaker 1: the Elite four and that's where your best trainers are.
Speaker 1: You just kind of watch it all happen instead of
Speaker 1: actually partaking, like they just changed.
Speaker 7: Oh my god, I just designed the game that only
Speaker 7: I would enjoy.
Speaker 3: Well, I mean football manager people would enjoy. I would
Speaker 3: love that.
Speaker 7: I would totally manage a Pokemon league. I was literally
Speaker 7: I was going to say that next.
Speaker 1: To gets mentioned every episode, but what you get to.
Speaker 2: I've heard that there there's there's a mini game in
Speaker 2: like a Dragon, which, first of all, someone who was it,
Speaker 2: I think Evan posted earlier today and it's like he
Speaker 2: referred to it as yak is a Lad, and I
Speaker 2: was like, so much.
Speaker 3: One really is the yak is a Lad?
Speaker 7: I might say, yes, number one.
Speaker 3: They make that joke. There is a character, the character
Speaker 3: in the game.
Speaker 2: Who you meet and this is not sports is very
Speaker 2: early on and he you talk to him, and he
Speaker 2: and you tell him your name and he goes.
Speaker 3: Oh, Itchi ban a number one name. Is very fun
Speaker 3: because if you're not awake, that character is very weird.
Speaker 5: Character is so.
Speaker 2: Strange, and the fact that he really picks and chooses
Speaker 2: when he speaks in English, which is very true. But
Speaker 2: Itchi is a Japanese for one in Ichuban is number one.
Speaker 5: Number one, number one.
Speaker 1: Yeah, number one. Next next question here is from Matt Lucy.
Speaker 1: Do you want to read this one? Hey?
Speaker 3: After dark Crewe.
Speaker 2: Nintendo's recent decision to make Super Mario three D All
Speaker 2: Stars and Fire Emblem in nineteen ninety limited time releases
Speaker 2: has been contentious for some. Nintendo has made limited supply,
Speaker 2: high demand titles in the past, but these two games
Speaker 2: are releasing three months apart and ceasinge production.
Speaker 3: On the same day.
Speaker 2: I'm curious to know why do you think Microsoft or
Speaker 2: Sony haven't adopted this strategy? Thanks Matt, Because only Nintendo
Speaker 2: can get away with that shit, because this is some
Speaker 2: peak Nintendo early nineties bullshit. That's win because because the
Speaker 2: ambo they've been doing it the whole time.
Speaker 7: Man, they've been this is their thing, and people are
Speaker 7: just like, I love Mario and I'm people, I'm bitches
Speaker 7: in that situation.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think it's because Nintendo, unlike Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony,
Speaker 4: have more than two online service so that means they
Speaker 4: can have multiple games running at the same time, whereas
Speaker 4: Nintendo's like, if we have too many online games, we
Speaker 4: will run out of service. We've got two service, so if.
Speaker 5: You want another that you want Splatoon to be online,
Speaker 5: you've got to take game or three months for that game,
Speaker 5: and then it's off.
Speaker 2: So this is so legit when I said this is
Speaker 2: a classic bullshit Inintendo move, it is something they've done
Speaker 2: since the late eighties and nineties, Like they basically create
Speaker 2: this kind of false high demand by under selling to retailers,
Speaker 2: like they would.
Speaker 3: Console Wars is really good for this.
Speaker 2: You should read or watch that, like it kind of
Speaker 2: goes into a big detail.
Speaker 3: But they would I think they.
Speaker 2: Would like overpromise and underdeliver stock or like severely limit
Speaker 2: their stock so they would always kind of be sold
Speaker 2: out and wanted to be in demand, and people would
Speaker 2: always be talking about it. And this kind of feels
Speaker 2: like they're digital equivalent.
Speaker 3: And it's so weird because they would make so much money.
Speaker 2: If they just released their back catalog in a way
Speaker 2: that was easy for people to access. Like if they
Speaker 2: don't do something for Zelda's anniversary next year, like because
Speaker 2: I know they did it with Mario this year, but like,
Speaker 2: think about how much money they would make if they
Speaker 2: just put okerina of Time on the switch.
Speaker 5: They'll do it, price people would buy it, Yeah, they'll.
Speaker 4: Do it, but they'll do it, Yeah, they'll do it
Speaker 4: in a way that makes you so mad that they're
Speaker 4: doing it. They'll be like, oh, we've got the Zelda
Speaker 4: game here, It's available for twenty hours at double the
Speaker 4: price definished. Yeah, and construct itself and all of us
Speaker 4: will be so mad, but we'll buy it so fast and.
Speaker 5: Well, like we are.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we know the reason why they do it, because capitalism,
Speaker 2: but like, oh yeah, they make so much money, and
Speaker 2: it's it's so strange to see them do this, like
Speaker 2: because Nintendo games, out of like Sony and Nintendo and
Speaker 2: Microsoft and PC, Nintendo games are the ones that hold
Speaker 2: their value for so much longer, and honestly, maybe it's
Speaker 2: just this long game that they've been doing to ensure that, Like,
Speaker 2: especially in the second time retail market, Nintendo games hold
Speaker 2: their value so well, and those games are very very
Speaker 2: rarely on like a killer sale, Like I mean, Watchdog's
Speaker 2: Legion is already out there for thirty bucks.
Speaker 7: Yeah, and like fire Emblem went on sale for like
Speaker 7: fifty dollars and it was like the lowest it had
Speaker 7: ever been and like our commerce Senator Jane was like,
Speaker 7: oh my god, can you write up the Fire Emblem story.
Speaker 7: It's ten dollars off and I was like, holy shit, yeah,
Speaker 7: and I.
Speaker 3: Mean like.
Speaker 2: Business acumen coming out of the wazoo, but sucks.
Speaker 3: It sucks.
Speaker 1: You ever tried to buy a Pokemon Heart gold or
Speaker 1: sil Silver I have, It's like a couple of hundred.
Speaker 1: But I was like, I should get those games again.
Speaker 1: And then I found them on Amazon and I was like, no,
Speaker 1: I'm not doing that.
Speaker 3: Thank Captain America vibes. No, I don't think I will.
Speaker 7: It's I found at my parents' house. I was like,
Speaker 7: I was like, Mom, thank god you didn't throw this away.
Speaker 3: It's so expensive. I'm like, I have mine in the UK.
Speaker 2: If I'm ever allowed back that, Jake, I can.
Speaker 1: I mean to be like I was looking at Sealed,
Speaker 1: which was even more expensive over like three hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty dollars. But I still think even like good condition
Speaker 1: used ones were like eighty ninety dollars, which is still
Speaker 1: a bit ridiculous considering when I bought that game. I
Speaker 1: don't know when did it come out, it doesn't matter.
Speaker 1: It was like it's like thirty bucks.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 7: I do think I don't know Nintendo more so than
Speaker 7: like I want.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 7: I haven't looked at the numbers, I just feel like
Speaker 7: Nintendo has higher highs and lower lows, and like if
Speaker 7: you look at the WIU and like, I just feel
Speaker 7: like maybe if I'm nintento, I'm like, I gotta put
Speaker 7: together a Nest Egg for the next time we have
Speaker 7: a failed experiment because I just feel like Nintendo tends
Speaker 7: to play it less safe as well in terms of
Speaker 7: like just in terms of making something that like is
Speaker 7: a guaranteed like people are gonna love this because it's
Speaker 7: exactly what the market wants.
Speaker 1: They haven't competed with Sony or Microsoft in well over
Speaker 1: a decade. Yeah, So to your point.
Speaker 7: That's why I said, like at the start, it's like
Speaker 7: because only Nintendo can get away with that because Nintendo.
Speaker 3: Just has, like.
Speaker 7: You know, now decades of nostalgia built up and a
Speaker 7: certain like there's just a certain quality to I mean,
Speaker 7: PlayStation does have nostalgia. You have stuff like Spiro and Crash.
Speaker 7: It's just like Nintendo is so prominent in like when
Speaker 7: you think about the happy, fuzzy gaming memories of your
Speaker 7: childhood that it's just kind of like, well, I love
Speaker 7: fire Emblem. I've never played that one because it's it
Speaker 7: was only in Japan, and I'm a big nerd who
Speaker 7: loves Japan. I'm gonna buy it, Like, let's just how
Speaker 7: my brain works.
Speaker 2: I also don't think Nintendo has necessarily had the so
Speaker 2: with both Spiro and Crash, you kind of had those
Speaker 2: the ps two years, which seems to have soiled people's
Speaker 2: opinions of those franchises somewhat. However, I will say the
Speaker 2: new Crash very good, but I don't feel like there's
Speaker 2: been I don't think Nintendo's had an equivalent childhood smasher
Speaker 2: so to speak.
Speaker 7: Yeah, like Sonic has too. Like obviously Sega is a
Speaker 7: whole different ballgame, but like you have a lot of
Speaker 7: mascot characters who fell from Grace.
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 7: For some reason, I wanted to be like, ah, the
Speaker 7: bimbofication of Crash, but like that's not what happened. But
Speaker 7: but you know, like just something happened to him along
Speaker 7: the way is what the vibe I was trying to convey.
Speaker 3: When you said Sega there reminded me of the so.
Speaker 2: The the Sega moving out of the arcade business in Japan,
Speaker 2: the one of the places in Tokyo, the Big Sega
Speaker 2: Arcade trip. They took down the it's It's closed, and
Speaker 2: they took down the big sign, but someone put it
Speaker 2: on the back.
Speaker 5: Of a truck.
Speaker 3: But they put it G A S. E.
Speaker 2: And so someone remixed at sega jingle and there's a
Speaker 2: great tweet where it goes.
Speaker 3: O gayz, which is now the only way I will
Speaker 3: ever hear it in my home.
Speaker 1: Well, anyway, that's been episode sixty eight of Game Spot
Speaker 1: after Dark.
Speaker 5: Thank you all so much for listening.
Speaker 2: Next week's gonna be nice in it a nice episode,
Speaker 2: Thanksgiving episode.
Speaker 1: Thanksgiving episodes we'll have to record a little bit earlier.
Speaker 7: We will be thankful for the number of episodes I think, yeah.
Speaker 1: And thank you guys for joining me.
Speaker 6: Lucy.
Speaker 1: What are you working on and where can people find you?
Speaker 3: Generation next?
Speaker 2: This week we are talking about the bugs and issues that.
Speaker 3: People people are having.
Speaker 2: A lot of people are having with the xbook series
Speaker 2: X and the PlayStation five that'll be out by the
Speaker 2: time this episode is live. I'm also working with the
Speaker 2: lovely Jordan Romae on some stuff you might have missed.
Speaker 2: An Assassin's Creed val Halla. There are some really cool
Speaker 2: side missions in that game that I haven't seen too
Speaker 2: many people shouting about Sir Jordan's kindly had a master
Speaker 2: list from when he was doing his review, so he
Speaker 2: wrote up some of the best ones. I'm going to
Speaker 2: be capturing footage for that one, and then on top
Speaker 2: of that, just surviving in it anyway. Yeah, Greg agreed.
Speaker 3: Thanks Greg, And then I'm on Twitter at least the.
Speaker 5: James Games, Timorro How are you?
Speaker 4: I am on Twitter at tamare h just doing nonsense? There,
Speaker 4: I read my review of.
Speaker 5: Demon there you go, There you go. What the game's
Speaker 5: name was?
Speaker 6: Yeah?
Speaker 4: And Generation Next is the thing that Lucy mentioned earlier.
Speaker 4: And yeah, I'm around Kelly.
Speaker 3: How are you?
Speaker 7: You can follow me on Twitter at inky doji go
Speaker 7: I n k y d o j i kk oh.
Speaker 3: I just don't.
Speaker 7: Enjoy tweeting anymore, so I don't tweet as much. But
Speaker 7: I'm very very much looking forward to the Animal Crossing
Speaker 7: New Horizons Winter update, which is launching Thursday, So if
Speaker 7: you're listening to this, it's already out and it's going
Speaker 7: to increase home storage from sixteen hundred to twenty four
Speaker 7: hundred spots, So I'm actually gonna be able to put
Speaker 7: everything away and I cannot wait. I have so much
Speaker 7: garbage on the ground. I am so freaking excited, so
Speaker 7: freaking excited to expand. It's the first thing I'm gonna
Speaker 7: do tomorrow. I'm gonna wake up and I'm expanding my
Speaker 7: home storage and I'm punning everything away.
Speaker 3: I can't wait, like Christmas morning.
Speaker 7: Oh yeah, I actually don't know when it's launching tomorrow,
Speaker 7: what time it is?
Speaker 1: Well no, I mean like once you upgrade, will tom
Speaker 1: look be like, okay, I'll get that done tomorrow.
Speaker 7: If that bitch makes me wait, oh my god, So
Speaker 7: I just can't. I'm just like really really excited for
Speaker 7: that and discovering what new items and stuff await you
Speaker 7: can finally sit down on the ground. So big, big
Speaker 7: things are happening. And they also added a lot of
Speaker 7: new hairstyles, specifically geared towards lack players, which I think
Speaker 7: is really cool. And then yeah, Call of Duty review
Speaker 7: is gonna be live barring a total network crash by
Speaker 7: the time you're listening to this episode, so please read it.
Speaker 1: You can find me at Jacob dec And I am
Speaker 1: finishing up a video about the dual Sense with demon souls,
Speaker 1: which should be up by Friday. If not, something happened,
Speaker 1: but they should be there.
Speaker 3: I think something happened, something happened.
Speaker 1: Anyway, We'll see all next week for episode sixty nine.
Speaker 7: Nice nice to seen to return to