Speaker 1: Welcome everybody to the Game Informer Show, a weekly podcast
Speaker 1: covering the video game industry. Join us every week for
Speaker 1: discussion about the latest gaming news, reviews, and exclusive reveals,
Speaker 1: alongside Game Informer staff and special guests from around the industry.
Speaker 1: I'm one of your hosts today, Alex Van Aiken, and
Speaker 1: I am joined by Marcus Stewart. Hey, Neil, Marcus, Hi.
Speaker 2: What's up. It's a reference to our Resident Evil Outbreak
Speaker 2: super replay. Shout out to George, one of our hapless companions.
Speaker 2: He does that a lot. He just goes hi, and
Speaker 2: then he gets like, staff.
Speaker 1: I saw that. Y'all are what seven episodes into that?
Speaker 1: How's that going?
Speaker 2: It's going great. We're stuck in scenario three. We're like
Speaker 2: in the middle. We have a key that we don't
Speaker 2: know the bad luck goes to. Yet that's our occurrent
Speaker 2: sort of hurdle camming. Over All of our companions are idiots.
Speaker 2: Cindy died because she carried three red herbs that are useless.
Speaker 2: But yeah, it's going it's going good.
Speaker 1: It's it's been like, yeah, listeners of your Curious Resident
Speaker 1: Evil Outbreak is the what spiritual prequel to Resident Evil
Speaker 1: Requiem there's some characters introduced in that.
Speaker 2: There's one one, Alyssa Ashcroft, who was who we're playing ass.
Speaker 1: He is the only she's the mom of the protagonist.
Speaker 3: Yes, and.
Speaker 2: Then also dies in requiem like they just showed that.
Speaker 1: Okay, great, yeah, sure that's sign Thanks Capcom. We're also
Speaker 1: joined by Eric Van Allen.
Speaker 4: How you doing, Eric? I'm doing good. I don't have
Speaker 4: anything to reference.
Speaker 1: I could.
Speaker 4: I could be like a Pokemon and just say Eric, Eric,
Speaker 4: that's my name.
Speaker 1: Eric. We're gonna be talking about that later on in
Speaker 1: the show. And we're joined by a special guest, Bill Fairchild.
Speaker 1: You might know him from the nerd nest On YouTube
Speaker 1: or Patreon. Bill. How you do?
Speaker 5: Hey, how's it going everybody? I'm happy to be here.
Speaker 5: I didn't know i'd have to have a reference ready,
Speaker 5: so you normally don't.
Speaker 1: It's you know, they're feeling really, they're feeling extra wild today.
Speaker 2: You could reference something that just happened on this show.
Speaker 1: Yeah, just hi, yuh, there you go. Oh wow, it's
Speaker 1: a residentieval outbreak.
Speaker 2: What a callback?
Speaker 1: Wow? Bill, thank you for joining us. You and I
Speaker 1: met back at Paseas through a mutual friend Bob Wolf
Speaker 1: and Hit it off, and yeah, I wanted to have
Speaker 1: you come on the show. Your expertise is on PC handhelds, right.
Speaker 5: Well, I wouldn't say that I have any expertise in
Speaker 5: any area in particular, but I do use a lot
Speaker 5: of PC handhelds.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And of course the Xbox rock Ally and la
Speaker 1: X are out. Now you've spent about a week with them,
Speaker 1: if I'm not mistaken.
Speaker 5: And yeah, I'm going to pick your brain. Yeah, they're
Speaker 5: sitting here at my desk. I've been using them a bunch,
Speaker 5: putting them through their I think Microsoft has done some
Speaker 5: pretty cool stuff, but maybe it's not quite far enough.
Speaker 3: We'll have to talk about it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we'll talk about it in just a second. But
Speaker 1: I did want to give you a chance to let
Speaker 1: our listeners and our viewers know what nerd nest is
Speaker 1: all about and kind of what you get up to
Speaker 1: over there.
Speaker 5: So nerdnest is my YouTube channel, which is also where
Speaker 5: I have my podcast, and basically I do gaming news stuff,
Speaker 5: mostly focusing on PC gaming that kind of thing, but
Speaker 5: I also will talk about what's happening in the rest
Speaker 5: of the industry, hardware reviews, things like that, and then
Speaker 5: every week I also have a podcast where it's myself,
Speaker 5: the Fox Retro gamecre and Fan the Deck and we
Speaker 5: sit down and we look at what's going on in
Speaker 5: the industry and just kind of talk about it, and
Speaker 5: then in the second half of the show, we usually
Speaker 5: talk about the games we've been playing.
Speaker 1: Awesome. Well, that seems like a natural recommendation for folks
Speaker 1: who listen to this podcast, so make sure to go
Speaker 1: and check that out. Nerd Nest is and that's the
Speaker 1: name of the podcast as well.
Speaker 5: Right, Yeah, everything's nerd Nest which is actually the name
Speaker 5: of this room because when we built this room, my
Speaker 5: wife was telling one of her friends about it. Yeah,
Speaker 5: like that we that I had like this studio and
Speaker 5: she said, well we her her friend called it the
Speaker 5: man Cave, and my wife goes, well, he doesn't do
Speaker 5: anything manly in there, so they called it the nerd Nest.
Speaker 3: And I don't. I mean, she's right, I don't do anything.
Speaker 1: Likewise.
Speaker 2: You like curling a controller, that's probably manly. Yeah, it's
Speaker 2: pretty light though. You got to get a lot of
Speaker 2: reps in order to get in a good workout.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, more about tone than than muscle. Yeah. Uh well, Bill,
Speaker 1: thanks for joining us. Let's not waste any more time.
Speaker 1: Let's jump into the Xbox rock Ally. Of course, listeners,
Speaker 1: if you need a primer, this is the new Xbox
Speaker 1: partner with asis Zeus. Who are They've previously made the
Speaker 1: rog Ally, which was a very well regarded PC handheld.
Speaker 1: You could still buy it today. It's probably what I
Speaker 1: would consider to be the main competitor of the steam Deck.
Speaker 1: It is more expensive than the seam Deck but has
Speaker 1: been known to get better performance and that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: And Xbox this new Xbox rog Ally and Ally X,
Speaker 1: which are the two different skews. The x is the
Speaker 1: more powerful version. These are kind of the the successor
Speaker 1: to that first rog Ally, And a lot being talked
Speaker 1: about this week about these handhelds and in their performance
Speaker 1: and the new sort of Xbox you know, dashboard of
Speaker 1: sorts that that it's got on there. But Bill, I'll
Speaker 1: kind of toss it over to you to kind of
Speaker 1: continue and expand on that primer and kind of kick
Speaker 1: us off with the kind of your thoughts on these
Speaker 1: devices so far.
Speaker 5: Yeah, So just to give everybody background on it. There's
Speaker 5: there's two versions. There's the white one and the black one.
Speaker 5: The white one has the a M D rise in
Speaker 5: Z two A chip set, which is very similar to
Speaker 5: the Vangu chipset which is in the Steam Deck, which
Speaker 5: they're they're like these these very low power chips that
Speaker 5: can't really do too much to push games, but if
Speaker 5: you keep the resolution low enough and you turn off
Speaker 5: some settings, you can play a lot of different games
Speaker 5: on them. The other one is the Xbox ally X
Speaker 5: and this one has the Z two Extreme chip set,
Speaker 5: which has a lot more power than the Z two
Speaker 5: A chip set. Uh, this one will give you a
Speaker 5: more power. It also has a bigger battery. It has
Speaker 5: the Xbox I forget what they're called, but the Xbox
Speaker 5: triggers that have Liketic feedback. Yeah, it has those in it,
Speaker 5: but they and then they have seven inch screens, one
Speaker 5: hundred and twenty hurts with VRR which will smooth out
Speaker 5: that gameplay if you are running into hitches because these
Speaker 5: are low power devices. The white one six hundred dollars
Speaker 5: and the black one is one thousand dollars, which is
Speaker 5: pretty expensive. Yeah, large pill to swallow, it is, and
Speaker 5: I think that I think that this would have been
Speaker 5: the for the audio listeners. Sorry, I'm holding up The
Speaker 5: white one would have been better off at five hundred
Speaker 5: dollars and the black one probably would have been better
Speaker 5: off at eight hundred dollars, but according to Microsoft, market
Speaker 5: conditions forced them to raise those prices. So, yeah, things
Speaker 5: are pretty expensive right now. I mean everything's expensive right now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, of course, yeah, it's no strain. I mean everything's
Speaker 1: getting all prices are getting raised lately. It's a shame.
Speaker 1: But you know, what do you think about the devices? Like,
Speaker 1: how are you enjoying them? What's kind of your use
Speaker 1: case looking like the past week with these things?
Speaker 3: So I think that.
Speaker 5: When you're trying to like when people ask that question,
Speaker 5: usually they're trying to decide do I want this or
Speaker 5: do I want that? Like which device do I want?
Speaker 5: And I think that for the most part, when when
Speaker 5: people kind of get stuck in a console war mentality
Speaker 5: that this is better than that, it isn't really like
Speaker 5: that because all of these play essentially the same games.
Speaker 5: You want to buy a Steam Deck, then the Steam
Speaker 5: Deck is going to play the same games that these
Speaker 5: are going to play, and so they're just PCs.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 5: The fact that they have an Xbox logo on these
Speaker 5: new ones that introduces like this expectation that I think
Speaker 5: that people have that oh, okay, well it's going to
Speaker 5: be like an Xbox, and they're not like xboxes. They're
Speaker 5: more like Xboxes than any previous Windows PC handheld that
Speaker 5: I've seen. But still I think that Microsoft has further
Speaker 5: to go in order to get the UI really where
Speaker 5: it needs to be, to where you never really realize
Speaker 5: that you're just running Windows. Of course, the advantages that
Speaker 5: these play Steam games, they play Epic games, they play
Speaker 5: Goog games. You can play whatever the hell you want
Speaker 5: on this Really you can play everything, and that's one
Speaker 5: of the really great things about devices like this. If
Speaker 5: you're trying to decide between, say a Steam Deck and
Speaker 5: one of these things, it really depends on what kind
Speaker 5: of games that you're going to be playing and how
Speaker 5: important Windows is to you. Because with Windows it plays everything.
Speaker 5: On the Steam Deck, you lose the ability to play
Speaker 5: games that are like that use anti cheat or DRM, or.
Speaker 1: A lot of multiplayer games are.
Speaker 5: Exactly Or if you really are into game pass, even
Speaker 5: though it's now thirty dollars a month, then these are
Speaker 5: the devices that you would want to get over a
Speaker 5: Steam deck, because you can't do game pass games on
Speaker 5: steam Deck for the most part.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there are some you know, some workarounds, but I
Speaker 1: think that the average user is not going to go
Speaker 1: through the trouble of doing what you need to do
Speaker 1: to get other launches to run on the steam Deck.
Speaker 1: I remember when I first unboxed my It was the
Speaker 1: first it was the LCD Steam Deck had just come out,
Speaker 1: and I went to the trouble of installing battle Neet
Speaker 1: and I was playing Ward of Warcraft with like this
Speaker 1: controller mod and it was it was very cool for like,
Speaker 1: oh this thing can do this, but it was a
Speaker 1: massive pain in the ass anytime I wanted to actually
Speaker 1: go and play it or like have a smooth experience.
Speaker 1: And there's a lot of that kind of stuff with
Speaker 1: the steam Deck where if you put in the effort,
Speaker 1: yeah you can, you can. You can get stuff to work,
Speaker 1: you know, you can get emulation to run and all
Speaker 1: that sort of stuff. But having a Windows handheld, you know,
Speaker 1: just opens the door to so much more you know,
Speaker 1: native support. And I think particularly games like like a
Speaker 1: Marvel Rivals, for instance, I would love to play that
Speaker 1: on this device, or a Fortnite right something that previously,
Speaker 1: you know, I haven't been able to play really because
Speaker 1: of anti cheat yeh, but but yeah it.
Speaker 2: So is it fair to say as someone like me
Speaker 2: who is like, I have a gaming PC, but I
Speaker 2: am a console person. I just like the convenience of console.
Speaker 2: Is the rock ally better? For like, if I don't
Speaker 2: want to fiddle with anything and I just want the
Speaker 2: closest thing to just like, I just want to install
Speaker 2: the games and they're most likely just play. Is this
Speaker 2: a better option than the Steam Deck?
Speaker 3: I wouldn't.
Speaker 5: I would say that it's pretty similar. It also does
Speaker 5: depend on what games you're gonna play, Like, if you're
Speaker 5: just playing like a bunch of indie games or mostly
Speaker 5: single player stuff that you never have to like go online,
Speaker 5: then when you like, the Steam Deck will play of
Speaker 5: the vast majority of my library, it won't play anything
Speaker 5: that's on the Epic Games Store because the Epic Game
Speaker 5: Store doesn't support Well, that's not necessarily true, because you
Speaker 5: couldn't do the things that Alex was talking about before.
Speaker 1: Not out of the box.
Speaker 5: Yeah, not out of the box. You will have to
Speaker 5: jump through hoops. Honestly, if you are a console player,
Speaker 5: my recommendation if you want something to play portably is
Speaker 5: to just get a switch to, not because I think
Speaker 5: that the switch to is necessarily better, but it doesn't
Speaker 5: require any thinking on the part of the end user.
Speaker 5: You'd never have to sit down to play a game
Speaker 5: and be like, how the hell does this work?
Speaker 1: Again?
Speaker 5: Oh I remember now, or I have to go look
Speaker 5: something up. There's just a lot less friction that way,
Speaker 5: if that makes sense. But that also closes off a
Speaker 5: lot of games to you if you're playing only on
Speaker 5: the switch too.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: Something that I've been really curious about is this has evolved,
Speaker 4: this entire market that kind of just sprung out of
Speaker 4: Valve deciding to do Steam decks and and try to
Speaker 4: make these at home PCs. Is that even going back
Speaker 4: before steam Deck to things like it was the Steam
Speaker 4: machines and things like that, you know, it always ended
Speaker 4: up being kind of almost a pro sumer product because
Speaker 4: you needed to be somebody who was willing to tinker.
Speaker 4: You needed to be willing to Even if you play
Speaker 4: on Steam Deck and you boot up something like say
Speaker 4: Trails in the Sky, you might need to go into settings,
Speaker 4: you might need to tinker to get the experience that
Speaker 4: you want that you you kind of hope for. Whereas,
Speaker 4: like you said, switch to you boot it up and
Speaker 4: what you get is what you get, and to some
Speaker 4: degree that that can be good or bad. I mean,
Speaker 4: on end of switch one life cycle, we kind of
Speaker 4: saw how that got a little tired after a while.
Speaker 4: But the flip side is that you aren't going to
Speaker 4: have to deal with those menus and stuff like that.
Speaker 4: So do you feel like it being a Windows platform
Speaker 4: does at least smooth out a little bit more of
Speaker 4: that for steam Deck and for the Linux side of
Speaker 4: things where people might not be as familiar or even
Speaker 4: like ready to do that kind of stuff. Or are
Speaker 4: you still kind of having to go into menus to
Speaker 4: optimize to kind of deal with the things that come
Speaker 4: with kind of a PC environment.
Speaker 5: Yeah, So I guess the way that I would put
Speaker 5: that is, like, let's say you're playing a game on
Speaker 5: the Nintendo Switch too, you don't have to worry well, okay,
Speaker 5: you don't have to worry on these new devices either,
Speaker 5: but you might want to. You don't have to worry
Speaker 5: on a switch to how much power the device needs
Speaker 5: in order to run the game that you want to play.
Speaker 5: So if I'm playing a game like let's say I'm
Speaker 5: playing Animal, well, I don't need twenty five watts of
Speaker 5: power to run Animal Well. I can run Animal Well
Speaker 5: at six wants of power and still get like sixty
Speaker 5: frames per second, no problem. On a device like these,
Speaker 5: you in order to get the best battery life, you
Speaker 5: would want to open up the menus, which admittedly Microsoft's
Speaker 5: new full screen experience, which is launching with these devices,
Speaker 5: is a lot easier to manage those power settings. Basically,
Speaker 5: you hit the Xbox button, you push left, and it
Speaker 5: brings up Armory crake, and then you have these little
Speaker 5: buttons there that say six watts, thirteen watts, twenty watts,
Speaker 5: and you say, all right, well, I'm playing a simple game,
Speaker 5: so I'll set it at six watts, and now the
Speaker 5: battery isn't going to run through nearly as much. When
Speaker 5: some a developer submits a game to Nintendo, Nintendo figures
Speaker 5: all that stuff out for you, so then you say,
Speaker 5: I'm going to launch this game, and you never have
Speaker 5: to think about that. So, even though I do think
Speaker 5: that there are a few less hoops to jump through
Speaker 5: when you are talking about a Windows style device over
Speaker 5: a Steam deck, I still think that these are things
Speaker 5: that you definitely want to keep in mind. And I
Speaker 5: would say, though, the thing that you have to think
Speaker 5: about less is which Proton version you're using for a
Speaker 5: particular game. And for the listeners who aren't aware of that,
Speaker 5: Valves tried to get developers to make games for Linux,
Speaker 5: and developers said god no. So then Valves said, fine,
Speaker 5: we'll do it ourselves, and they translated all of the
Speaker 5: Windows APIs over to Linux. So then when you go
Speaker 5: to run a game that's made for Windows, you can
Speaker 5: run it on Linux and it just says, hey, I
Speaker 5: need that API, and then Proton says, oh, here's the API.
Speaker 5: Don't pay attention too much that it doesn't look like
Speaker 5: what you're expecting and then it runs. So sometimes you
Speaker 5: play a game and the game won't start and you'd
Speaker 5: be like, oh, I'm going to switch to a different
Speaker 5: version of Proton, and then it starts. So there's usually solutions,
Speaker 5: but you do have to jump through a few more hoops.
Speaker 5: But I don't do that very often, if that makes
Speaker 5: any sense.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I did a lot of that more when I
Speaker 1: first got my Steam deck. I think that was you know,
Speaker 1: that's as time goes on, you know, the you just
Speaker 1: kind of want to sit down and play a game
Speaker 1: and I'm like, I'll sacrifice a few frames here and
Speaker 1: there if it means I'll just you know, launch the
Speaker 1: game and and and have it do my settings default.
Speaker 1: That kind of thing. Most with most games, I would say,
Speaker 1: outside of modern Triple A games, that usually works all
Speaker 1: right with the steam Deck. Now, I'm currently playing a
Speaker 1: game that we can't talk about yet for review, and
Speaker 1: you know, it's a bigger game, and I've recently kind
Speaker 1: of been on its steam Deck kick again. I kind
Speaker 1: of go back and forth between my switch to and
Speaker 1: my steam deck. I've been playing Silk Song for a
Speaker 1: while on my switch and I kind of am and
Speaker 1: done with that. I'm like, okay, back to steam Deck.
Speaker 1: And you know, it's it's a real bummer when you
Speaker 1: when you open up one of those games and you're
Speaker 1: getting you know, sub thirty frame rate and you can't
Speaker 1: even hit like thirty frames on the low. And that's
Speaker 1: kind of like where my steam deck has started to
Speaker 1: let me down a bit. And that's natural, right, It's
Speaker 1: not meant to run these games, especially you know, Unreal
Speaker 1: Engine five has had you know, a lot of those
Speaker 1: games don't work on the steam Deck or run very poorly,
Speaker 1: which is another point I want to ask about in
Speaker 1: a second. But yeah, if you're just looking to play,
Speaker 1: like Bill said, Animal Well or ball x Pit, which
Speaker 1: is what we're playing we're going to be talking about
Speaker 1: later today on this episode. I've been playing the hell
Speaker 1: out of that put, you know, fifteen twenty hours into
Speaker 1: it on steam Deck and it runs perfectly. And I know,
Speaker 1: like when the steam Deck first came out, people were
Speaker 1: you know, we had like God of War on there
Speaker 1: and you know, Death Stranding and you can hit thirty
Speaker 1: fps with those, but you know, those games are what
Speaker 1: you know, six seven years old now, depending and you know,
Speaker 1: if you want to play games that came out last
Speaker 1: year or even earlier this year, like clar Obscure is
Speaker 1: one that I would have loved to play on my
Speaker 1: steam Deck, but it's just it runs at an unacceptable
Speaker 1: frame rate, Like it just it's not really playable. And
Speaker 1: you know, we still see developers release updates here and there.
Speaker 1: Baldersgate three just recently got an official patch for steam
Speaker 1: Deck that we've talked about on on Gamemanformer dot com
Speaker 1: a bit. But yeah, it's I'm kind of at that
Speaker 1: point Bill where I am like, Okay, I think I
Speaker 1: want to upgrade to something a little beefier. I'm kind
Speaker 1: of stuck between the Ally and the ally X. So
Speaker 1: that's why I'm kind of really especially curious about your
Speaker 1: experience kind of running these modern, more modern games on
Speaker 1: those devices. Are you getting better performance or is it
Speaker 1: kind of on par with what you'd expect from from
Speaker 1: something like an Ally the first generation Ally? Curious to
Speaker 1: your thoughts on that.
Speaker 5: So when you say the first generation Ally are you
Speaker 5: are you talking about the Xbox ones? Are you talking
Speaker 5: about the original white rog.
Speaker 1: Alli, original white rog Ally?
Speaker 5: Okay, that one got That one one runs the Z
Speaker 5: one Extra Stream chipset, which is not as powerful as
Speaker 5: the Z two Extreme chipsets that are in here, but
Speaker 5: a little more powerful than what's in the Steam.
Speaker 3: Deck, which is the van Go chipset.
Speaker 5: And I feel like what I would say about those
Speaker 5: in particular is will you get a performance boost? Yes
Speaker 5: you will, but it's not really going to be all
Speaker 5: that noticeable. And then when you look at the rog Lix,
Speaker 5: not the new ones from Xbox, but the one that
Speaker 5: came out last year or the year before, I can't remember. Yes,
Speaker 5: this one that's black and it doesn't have it doesn't
Speaker 5: have the extra handles on it. This also has the
Speaker 5: Z one Extreme chipset. So the big difference between this
Speaker 5: one and the white one is the form factors a
Speaker 5: little bit better, the curves are a little bit better,
Speaker 5: It's easier to hold, it feels nicer in the hands.
Speaker 5: It has a giant eighty hour battery in it. The
Speaker 5: original one I believe had a forty hour.
Speaker 1: Oh wow.
Speaker 5: So when you compare the steam Deck to the rog
Speaker 5: ally the not the Xbox Ones. Basically the Z one
Speaker 5: Extreme chip set is very is more powerful than the
Speaker 5: van Go chip set, but it does not sip the battery.
Speaker 5: It chugs the battery, so it just like burns through
Speaker 5: your battery really really fast. And they could not compete
Speaker 5: on efficiency with Valve. So what they did instead is
Speaker 5: they just said, well, I'm just gonna brute force it
Speaker 5: and throw a giant battery in there that'll just last
Speaker 5: way longer. And that solved the problem for them. And
Speaker 5: this is a really really great device. I don't know
Speaker 5: how much it costs right now, though.
Speaker 1: That's fair. Yeah, I think I was looking. I think
Speaker 1: it's in the five to six hundred range on i've
Speaker 1: seen it. There's been some sales that kind of thing, and.
Speaker 3: If you walk into a best Buy you can usually
Speaker 3: find one used.
Speaker 1: Oh cool, I didn't realize that.
Speaker 5: Yeah, because the best Buy carries these devices, and so
Speaker 5: usually people will buy them. They'll think that it's going
Speaker 5: to be a console like experience and they'll have to
Speaker 5: jump through hoops and they'll be like, man, I'm not
Speaker 5: doing all this, and they'll take it back to the store.
Speaker 5: There's nothing wrong with it, you just have to If
Speaker 5: you're a PC gamer, you're going to be fine on
Speaker 5: these kind of devices. But if you're a console gamer,
Speaker 5: you will hit a wall where you're going to be
Speaker 5: annoyed at some point.
Speaker 1: Yeah, fair, fair, But yeah, what kind of games are
Speaker 1: you playing on it? I know you've only had it
Speaker 1: for a week. Are you kind of just jumping around
Speaker 1: for testing purposes? Have you? Kind of?
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's all I was doing, was just testing and
Speaker 5: testing and testing. So, like I put on Cyberpunk twenty
Speaker 5: seventy seven on the new white one. That's this one
Speaker 5: is about the same power envelope as the Steam deck.
Speaker 5: This one on Cyberpunk twenty seventy seven, I was getting, Oh,
Speaker 5: the best would be thirty.
Speaker 3: Three frames per second.
Speaker 5: Okay, And then with the steam Deck on that particular
Speaker 5: on Cyberpunk twenty seventy seven, I was getting about thirty
Speaker 5: five frames per second. So the steam Deck actually beat
Speaker 5: that one in Cyberpunk twenty seventy seven. That's not a
Speaker 5: huge surprise though, because Windows is it's very I'm going
Speaker 5: to use the word bloated. My friend Carrie is going
Speaker 5: to yell at me because I use the word bloated,
Speaker 5: because the point that I'm trying to make is it
Speaker 5: doesn't deal with the hardware very well, and Linux is
Speaker 5: just so much more efficient. So Linux it every time
Speaker 5: you install like Linux on one of these devices, they
Speaker 5: just run better the games. You get slightly better performance,
Speaker 5: and that's why the steam decks beating that one. I
Speaker 5: played Borderlands three on the Oh I forgot to tell
Speaker 5: you the Cyberpunk twenty seventy seven that I got sixty
Speaker 5: two frames per second on the Black one.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, that's this one. That's the thousand dollars one. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the that's I mean double the nearly double the
Speaker 1: frame rate.
Speaker 3: Yes, but it's also one thousand dollars.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, very true, very true.
Speaker 5: And then the same similar examples with games like Borderlands,
Speaker 5: Three Shadows of the Tomb Raider, Assassin's Creed, Valhalla. I
Speaker 5: was getting very similar results between those three things when
Speaker 5: I tested it in my video.
Speaker 1: Did you have a chance to check out the Oblivion remake?
Speaker 1: I'm curious, so.
Speaker 5: I okay, I have not installed Oblivion Remake on these sure,
Speaker 5: but I did make a video where at the when
Speaker 5: Oblivion Remake came out, I installed it on all of
Speaker 5: the devices that I had and tried it, and I
Speaker 5: don't remember what the results were, but it's not good.
Speaker 5: But it's an unreal five game. It really like these
Speaker 5: devices struggle with Unreal five games usually.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that's totally fair man. Any any other take
Speaker 1: aways in general that you think, like the general you know,
Speaker 1: our audiences. Honestly, we have a lot of console players
Speaker 1: in our audience, but I think there's a growing contingent
Speaker 1: of people who have like picked up a Steam deck
Speaker 1: and really enjoy it or or are on the fence
Speaker 1: about that or a steam deck. But any any kind
Speaker 1: of takeaways that might general folks, might people who aren't
Speaker 1: necessarily like really into this more niche section of the hobby.
Speaker 1: You know, they're not watching you know, nerd nests. They're
Speaker 1: not watching wolfed In or the Fox, you know that
Speaker 1: kind of thing.
Speaker 5: I think that what there's there's a couple of different
Speaker 5: ways to look at it. These devices do have those
Speaker 5: speed bumps in the friction that I talked about before.
Speaker 5: But at the same time, when you're playing on PC,
Speaker 5: you have those Steam sales and there's like one hundred
Speaker 5: thousand games on Steam. Yeah, so like everything is pretty
Speaker 5: much on PC with the exception of and like PlayStation
Speaker 5: in Nintendo exclusives. Eventually it's going to come to Steam
Speaker 5: and eventually it's going to be on sale. And so
Speaker 5: I think these devices are for the patient gamer. And
Speaker 5: if you're a patient gamer, if you're willing to wait
Speaker 5: for sales, if you're willing to wait for a game
Speaker 5: to come out and you know, work on your backlog
Speaker 5: instead of buying the new hotness, well then you might
Speaker 5: have a really good time with devices like the Steam
Speaker 5: Deck or the Xbox Ally or the ally X, or
Speaker 5: the Lenovo Legion Go two, which just came out, which
Speaker 5: is eye watering thirteen hundred and fifty dollars. Oh my god,
Speaker 5: but that screen is insanely beautiful. From what everybody told me.
Speaker 5: I haven't got hands on with that one yet.
Speaker 1: Man, Yeah, I totally agree with that. I mean, Steam
Speaker 1: is such a great ecosystem to get into, and even
Speaker 1: if you're if you're looking at getting one of these
Speaker 1: newer devices, maybe you haven't started building a PC library.
Speaker 1: Stuff like Goog and that sort of thing. Are epic
Speaker 1: games excellent platform to kind of get those games.
Speaker 5: And one of the things about these new devices over
Speaker 5: the Steam Deck is when you press that Xbox button,
Speaker 5: it brings up a little menu and it has the
Speaker 5: launchers that you have installed on the device right down
Speaker 5: below the last couple of games that you played. And
Speaker 5: so you can press that button, drop down, open Steam,
Speaker 5: drop down open I don't know, Epic Game Store if
Speaker 5: you want, which like gog or any of the other ones.
Speaker 5: Like on the Steam Deck, you have to jump through
Speaker 5: hoops to install other launchers, which isn't a big deal
Speaker 5: because you only have to do it once, but it
Speaker 5: is something that you do have to do, so that's
Speaker 5: another advantage that a device like this might have.
Speaker 4: I do also think it's interesting when we talk about
Speaker 4: these devices. I feel like the rise of a lot
Speaker 4: of tangential devices when it comes to retro gaming and
Speaker 4: things like that have also seen an uptick in the
Speaker 4: years since the Steam Deck started to take off. Things
Speaker 4: like Ambernick and Me You and all that have also
Speaker 4: been booting up in popularity over the last five six years,
Speaker 4: And I think it maybe shows just a general inclination
Speaker 4: that people, especially as they get older and want to
Speaker 4: play some of their older games, They're a little bit
Speaker 4: more willing to tinker.
Speaker 1: They're a little bit.
Speaker 4: More willing to say, I I'll deal with an ecosystem
Speaker 4: that is not just plug and play, but if you
Speaker 4: smooth it out a little bit, having that device that
Speaker 4: can play a lot of stuff theoretically across the entire
Speaker 4: board really does appeal. I mean that's the Steam Deck
Speaker 4: kind of opened my eyes in that regard to saying like, oh,
Speaker 4: I have this handheld that is just a PC can
Speaker 4: do PC things and not just you know, game boy things,
Speaker 4: switch things, you know, like I was used to with
Speaker 4: a handheld. So I think in some respects it can
Speaker 4: be a device that can be as difficult or as
Speaker 4: intricate as you want it to be. If you want
Speaker 4: to just open it up and play Steam games, it'll
Speaker 4: do that. But if you want to like tinker with it.
Speaker 4: It's open to tinkering too, and especially with the Windows environment,
Speaker 4: it might be a little bit more comfortable for people
Speaker 4: to tinker with than say a Linux environment that they
Speaker 4: might not be familiar with.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I never used Linux before the steam Deck. It's
Speaker 5: it's actually pretty similar. Like the number of times that
Speaker 5: I've needed to go into like the command line is
Speaker 5: only because I'm doing crazy nonsense so that I can
Speaker 5: make a tutorial or something like that. It's actually fairly simple,
Speaker 5: and if you buy the steam Deck you'd never have
Speaker 5: to go into desktop mode.
Speaker 4: Now you want to, Yeah, it sounds scary and it is, realistically,
Speaker 4: and I've done some of that stuff and it always
Speaker 4: you read the documentation, you're like, I don't know about this,
Speaker 4: and then you actually do it and you're like, oh,
Speaker 4: that wasn't bad after all.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think that if you guys have these things,
Speaker 5: the little little retro guys instead, I've got.
Speaker 1: In my closet. I think we've kind of got a
Speaker 1: smattering of like the annber Nicks and that sort of thing.
Speaker 4: I remember an sp here nice. I also recently, I
Speaker 4: don't play with it enough, but I've got the MEU
Speaker 4: like six button one as well.
Speaker 3: Oh cool.
Speaker 1: I remember when we met at when we met at
Speaker 1: PAX to your friend the fox is his kind of
Speaker 1: screen name is YouTube channel. He had a DS like computer.
Speaker 1: I don't remember what it.
Speaker 5: Was called, I think, but the GPD GPD something I
Speaker 5: don't know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that thing blew my mind. I was like, this
Speaker 1: is and he's like, yeah, that was like at least
Speaker 1: it was like something like a thousand dollars or twelve
Speaker 1: hundred or something. It's something ridiculous. And I was like,
Speaker 1: this is so cool though, like it was the clamshell. Look,
Speaker 1: it's super cool. But yeah, I mess I mod game Boys.
Speaker 1: Actually have a mod that I'm waiting to do when
Speaker 1: I get some free time this weekend. But I typically
Speaker 1: try to I play a lot, like a pocket that
Speaker 1: kind of thing. Okay, usually on my desk. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I know a lot of people love
Speaker 1: using their Steam deck for emulation and stuff. I haven't personally,
Speaker 1: uh done that with my steam deck yet, just because
Speaker 1: I have I do that on other things other devices.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I think, like this conversation is super interesting.
Speaker 1: I think I'm one of the things I've been thinking
Speaker 1: about actually the last couple of days as I've been
Speaker 1: kind of pondering my Steam Deck and if I want
Speaker 1: to upgrade it or not. Is I really just want
Speaker 1: to rig one of my extra PCs that's laying around
Speaker 1: to just boot into Steam os Steam Big Picture Mode, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and just set that up in my living room. I
Speaker 1: think that I think that might be a weekend project
Speaker 1: coming up, because you know, it's just having your PC
Speaker 1: library in like a place that's not my work desk,
Speaker 1: which is where I do all of my PC gaming.
Speaker 1: I'm like, whether it's the Steam Deck or you know,
Speaker 1: one of these new devices or rigging a PC. Like
Speaker 1: I said, I'm really kind of looking to, you know,
Speaker 1: put a little work in and then have a smoother
Speaker 1: experience of a more console like experience with my PC
Speaker 1: library because that's where I get all my games.
Speaker 4: But I've got a Steam Link that I picked up
Speaker 4: like back when they were doing the going away sale
Speaker 4: for that, and I'm still I'm mad I never got
Speaker 4: a PlayStation TV, and I'm glad that I thought to
Speaker 4: pick up a Steam Link before those kind of went
Speaker 4: the way of the DODO because it's like the coolest
Speaker 4: little device that I had it set up in my
Speaker 4: old place. I haven't set it up at the new
Speaker 4: place yet, but it's really something else to be able
Speaker 4: to just connect like that and move things through. And
Speaker 4: the steam deck is actually like kind of decent at that.
Speaker 4: I haven't done it in a hot minute, but there
Speaker 4: was It might've been Balder's Gate or something that I
Speaker 4: did a little bit of streaming to my steam deck
Speaker 4: and something where I didn't necessarily need the super high latency,
Speaker 4: but I wanted to just be able to I don't
Speaker 4: want to sit at my desk right now, I want
Speaker 4: to sit on the couch and play this.
Speaker 1: And it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it worked, it functions.
Speaker 2: Yeah, thank you for reminding me that I have a
Speaker 2: steam Link too that I forgot that I owned until
Speaker 2: this very second.
Speaker 4: But it all looks under their chair right now, they'll
Speaker 4: see they all have a steam Link.
Speaker 2: I think I also bought it when it was like
Speaker 2: three dollars and when they were just like please, we're
Speaker 2: trying to get rid of these, and I was like, yeah,
Speaker 2: I guess so. And I wasn't even PC gaming really
Speaker 2: at all, but I was like, well, it's like so cheap,
Speaker 2: I should probably just get it, because.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I missed it. I missed it unfortunately. But you know,
Speaker 1: Steam has its own you know, streaming between computers that
Speaker 1: I use on occasion, and that works fine.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and they have like they're just like steam Link
Speaker 5: is now just an app on most set top boxes.
Speaker 1: I didn't realize that that's great.
Speaker 4: That's the crazy part is we're getting to the point
Speaker 4: now where I don't use the set top box on
Speaker 4: my TV anymore because it has the built in streaming apps.
Speaker 4: And I was having that thought. I was like, we're
Speaker 4: probably not too far removed from the day when you're
Speaker 4: gonna be able to not have you know, a gaming
Speaker 4: PC's horsepower inside a TV. But if you've got a
Speaker 4: gaming PC that you can just stream it to your
Speaker 4: smart TV and you don't have to worry about all
Speaker 4: the connections and the hoops and stuff like that. You
Speaker 4: can just run it right through an Ethernet cable and
Speaker 4: be set.
Speaker 1: So damn, I just realized. So, my my wife and
Speaker 1: I we recently got I we have been using like
Speaker 1: the first Gin Chrome cast for like the last decade
Speaker 1: and finally gave out. So we recently, within like the
Speaker 1: last couple of weeks, bought like a whatever, the new
Speaker 1: Apple TVs are, and that just reminds me I should go,
Speaker 1: I bet it's got a steam a steam on it.
Speaker 1: Yeah that I could. I'm that it does, but I'm yeah,
Speaker 1: yeah that that sounds like a plan. Yeah, I just
Speaker 1: checked it does. Yeah, so that's awesome. But even though,
Speaker 1: so the.
Speaker 4: New the Xbox Allies, I assume can also do the
Speaker 4: sort of like docking situation where you can hook it
Speaker 4: up to a TV and run things off of it
Speaker 4: and things like that too.
Speaker 5: Right, Yeah, Actually, there's one advantage that these have over
Speaker 5: the steam deck. The steam deck has only one USB port. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 5: so when you are docking something like the rog ally
Speaker 5: I'm sorry, the Xbox Ally it has two USB ports,
Speaker 5: so that means you can plug it into the wall
Speaker 5: and then have the other plug go into the TV
Speaker 5: so that then it's docked to the TV.
Speaker 3: With a steam deck, there's only one port, so that
Speaker 3: means you have to buy a dock.
Speaker 5: Yeah, but they're like, if you turn the wrong way,
Speaker 5: you're going to trip over eighty three of them. Like,
Speaker 5: there's so many steam deck docks out there that are
Speaker 5: incredibly cheap. I would I would not recommend buying the
Speaker 5: Valve one because it's eighty.
Speaker 3: Dollars, yeah, which is expensive, but.
Speaker 5: It also comes with an extra power brick so you
Speaker 5: never have to unplug that. So like, there's that one
Speaker 5: advantage that it has. Plus it gets firmware updates from
Speaker 5: Valve and stuff like that. The Xbox ally Ax the
Speaker 5: black one also has two ports, but one of them
Speaker 5: is a thunderbolt think four. Don't quote me on that,
Speaker 5: I can't remember, but that means you can also buy
Speaker 5: a very expensive external GPU for a device like this
Speaker 5: and then dock it, which I've never tried, so I
Speaker 5: can't say how well it works. But you can buy
Speaker 5: an external GPU and then because these things aren't CPU bound,
Speaker 5: they're GPU bound, like they just don't have the GPU
Speaker 5: to deal with stuff, you can go buy an external
Speaker 5: GPU and then you have the same games that you're
Speaker 5: playing playing on your TV, and it's a much you know,
Speaker 5: higher resolution, higher frame rates and that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: Huh, you just sent Eric down a down a rabbit hole.
Speaker 1: He's going to start.
Speaker 4: You could build some to the prices, though, Eric, I'm
Speaker 4: too I'm too busy. I'm in the realm of I'm
Speaker 4: going to build my own like media server and stuff
Speaker 4: like that. That's where my next tech hole is going
Speaker 4: to be, is falling down the media server pipeline. But
Speaker 4: I do find that stuff fascinating as somebody who travels,
Speaker 4: because you know, I kind of stopped traveling with my
Speaker 4: steam deck because of how bulky it is and then
Speaker 4: having to throw a dock in with it and the
Speaker 4: cables in with it. I was like, the switch is
Speaker 4: so much smaller, it's so much easier to pack. Or
Speaker 4: even these retro consoles are you put them in your pocket.
Speaker 4: You put them in a pocket in like your backpack
Speaker 4: or whatever. It just fits right in. And so I'd
Speaker 4: been going that direction for a while, but I'm kind
Speaker 4: of waiting for the point where we get to where
Speaker 4: stuff is going to be a little bit more portable.
Speaker 4: And it seems like even just knocking off the need
Speaker 4: for a dock on some of this stuff is going
Speaker 4: to help with that. Because you get to a hotel room,
Speaker 4: you want to set it up, you want to be
Speaker 4: able to play on the TV in the hotel or whatever.
Speaker 4: You have to then have a dock. You have to
Speaker 4: plug it in. You have to find how to plug
Speaker 4: into the TV in a hotel room. I'm sure all
Speaker 4: of us have done that at some point is where
Speaker 4: where the HDMI ports on the Hodesel TV. So yeah,
Speaker 4: any anything that can make that process less painful helps.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Little pro tip if you're bringing your switch or switch
Speaker 5: to with you someplace, bring a deck of cards. Put
Speaker 5: it inside the dock. That way, nothing can make the
Speaker 5: dock break.
Speaker 1: Ah. Oh, that's very smart. Yeah, that's smart. I usually
Speaker 1: just travel without a dock, but it's been a few
Speaker 1: times where I'm like, especially like the recent release of
Speaker 1: like Lego Party, Like, oh, I think I'm gonna put
Speaker 1: that on my switch and like bring that places. So
Speaker 1: that's a very good tip.
Speaker 4: Live out that switch commercial Roof of the Park.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm trying, man, I'm really trying. Well, Bill, before
Speaker 1: you get out here, any any other games you've been
Speaker 1: enjoying lately that you want to shout out or talk
Speaker 1: about real quick? I know I didn't.
Speaker 5: I know, it's kind of putting you on the spot.
Speaker 5: That's okay, anything you've been enjoying. Yeah, Well, before I
Speaker 5: answered that question, I have a question for Marcus. Marcus
Speaker 5: asked me the question earlier. Should a console gamer pick
Speaker 5: up one of these things? After everything that I said,
Speaker 5: how do you feel about steam Deck versus the Xbox
Speaker 5: ally stuff. Are you interested in picking one up or
Speaker 5: do you still think that's not for me?
Speaker 2: I would So I've yet to buy a steam Deck
Speaker 2: or any handheld PC, like I've really like I want
Speaker 2: one just because you know, the idea of being able
Speaker 2: to play my very large PC libror anywhere is fantastic,
Speaker 2: especially for work purposes too. But a lot of it
Speaker 2: has been the price of them and some of the
Speaker 2: like jumping through hoops that I you know what you
Speaker 2: guys have talked about the wrong ally like that price
Speaker 2: is it's very oppressive because I I'm the sicko where
Speaker 2: it's like, if you give me two versions, I'm gonna
Speaker 2: want the best version because if I get the like
Speaker 2: you know, like I have a series x Xbox and
Speaker 2: not the s because like, well, I want the one
Speaker 2: that's always gonna run the things well and I have
Speaker 2: to worry about it. So I'm gonna want the thousand
Speaker 2: dollars one. And it's but I it's like, what would
Speaker 2: you since you guys are sort of like you know
Speaker 2: more about this idea, if you were to recommend which
Speaker 2: one you think I should get between like a let's see,
Speaker 2: like a Steam deck o led, which is the one
Speaker 2: I've been eyeing of, like, oh maybe if I get one,
Speaker 2: I guess it'll be this one or like the wrong Alley.
Speaker 3: What kind of games do you play?
Speaker 2: I mean, I have mostly my Steam library. It is
Speaker 2: probably like I played my game's there more, even though
Speaker 2: I have a very large Epic library and then.
Speaker 1: You know my it's a it's a mixture for work
Speaker 1: at least.
Speaker 2: Oh, I play like I mean for work, but I
Speaker 2: even personally I play like pretty much a bit of everything.
Speaker 2: I don't know if there's like is there.
Speaker 4: Type stuff for like more pixel arty type stuff like fidelity?
Speaker 4: Why is because that's kind of that that's going to
Speaker 4: swing it the most one way or another. I think
Speaker 4: if you want to silent hell f that's going to
Speaker 4: need a little bit more horsepower than say Animal Well
Speaker 4: or Stardew Valley or something like that.
Speaker 2: I think being a switch person has sort of conditioned
Speaker 2: me to play lower end stuff on a handheld, just
Speaker 2: because I just I just expect that to run without
Speaker 2: issue and not want to roll the dice on bigger
Speaker 2: triple A stuff. Even so, Yeah, I guess if I
Speaker 2: had probably like mid tier smaller things most.
Speaker 5: Of Yeah, Yeah, are you playing a lot of online
Speaker 5: games where you're playing against other people where you might
Speaker 5: have to worry about Marcus hates multiplayer.
Speaker 2: He won't admit it.
Speaker 1: He won't he won't admit it.
Speaker 2: I don't hate it, but yes, I'm a I'm a
Speaker 2: single player minded person pretty much ninety percent of the time.
Speaker 5: Then, I think for the most part, not one hundred percent,
Speaker 5: but for the most part. Steam Deck o led the
Speaker 5: one that you're thinking of, probably the mid tier one,
Speaker 5: not the most expensive one, because you can easily upgrade that.
Speaker 5: The thing that you get when you get the more
Speaker 5: expensive one is you get an anti glare coating on
Speaker 5: the screen, which makes the oleed a little less punchy,
Speaker 5: which you kind of don't want that, but at the
Speaker 5: same time also less reflections, So there's that. But then
Speaker 5: you also get a you know, more storage. But swapping
Speaker 5: out the storage on the steam Deck in any of
Speaker 5: these devices pretty much is dead simple. It's literally a
Speaker 5: couple of screws, take it out, put it in, screw
Speaker 5: it back together, and you're fine. Yeah, So I would
Speaker 5: say probably the five hundred and fifty dollars Steam deck
Speaker 5: OLAD is going to be the one that would probably
Speaker 5: work best for somebody who plays games like you.
Speaker 2: Okay, that's half of a raw Yx too, Yeah yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4: For like context, Like I have started to pick my
Speaker 4: steam Deck back up, and it's mostly been for things
Speaker 4: like Persona three, Reload Trails in the Sky first chapter,
Speaker 4: Digimon's Story, like turn based RPGs that just feel cozy
Speaker 4: to kind of sit on the couch and play while
Speaker 4: you have a second screen going because I am a
Speaker 4: child of my generation and I need the subway surfers
Speaker 4: on top of the video. But it's really effective for
Speaker 4: that kind of stuff. If you want to get into
Speaker 4: like clear Opscure, then that's going to need the horse power.
Speaker 4: But I've found that a lot of what you would
Speaker 4: say a kind of mid range RPGs over the last
Speaker 4: few years in terms of what they need from performance
Speaker 4: and horsepower, do really well on the steam Deck.
Speaker 2: Okay, one day, I'm not planned when I'm gonna make
Speaker 2: the plunge either way, I just kind of look at
Speaker 2: them from a far and go, hmm, wait for like.
Speaker 1: May maybe when I put on my clown makeup and
Speaker 1: pay a thousand dollars for the ally, you can buy
Speaker 1: my old lead. I think I've got the mid to
Speaker 1: old d one.
Speaker 2: I like the the clown makeup is a I like
Speaker 2: that that's a pre's part of the buying.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, especially because I posted already online that there's
Speaker 1: no way on God's Green Earth that I'm gonna pay
Speaker 1: a thousand dollars for a handheld. There's a there's a
Speaker 1: very real chance I will be paying a thousand dollars, which.
Speaker 4: Absolutely I've said before that I would never become the
Speaker 4: type of person who would spend a lot of money
Speaker 4: on cardboard, And then I started playing Magic the Gathering,
Speaker 4: so like, there's a room for all of us to
Speaker 4: change for the better and for the worse.
Speaker 1: You know, well, Bill, before you get out of here,
Speaker 1: you've been playing anything you want to shout out or
Speaker 1: talk about real quick.
Speaker 5: So I've been playing a lot of which is I
Speaker 5: have tons, so many games to play, and I can't
Speaker 5: stop playing two games. The first one is Cloverpit. Have
Speaker 5: you guys been playing Cloverpit?
Speaker 1: I haven't played Overpit's sick.
Speaker 5: It's so fun for the people who were watching or listening.
Speaker 5: You think, Billatro, which everybody knows about because of the
Speaker 5: Game Awards, last year, but instead it's a slot machine
Speaker 5: and when you lose, you get killed, and that's the
Speaker 5: whole game, and it's it's super fun. The other one
Speaker 5: that I've been playing is MEGABONK. Have you guys been playing?
Speaker 2: No, that's another one I need to play. Happen Hearing
Speaker 2: a lot.
Speaker 1: It's on I think it's on a couple of our
Speaker 1: lists to touch before the end of the year. I'm
Speaker 1: very familiar. It's it's it's a rogue light right, like
Speaker 1: sort of like Vampire Survivors Risk of Rain a little bit.
Speaker 5: Right, yeah, very much like Risk of Rain, like, yeah,
Speaker 5: because you just can't you get these swarms coming after you,
Speaker 5: and you can just do some crazy things. I was
Speaker 5: playing yesterday as Calcium, who is a skeleton that rides
Speaker 5: a skateboard, and longer he goes without getting hit, the
Speaker 5: faster he goes. And then I ended up picking up
Speaker 5: a power up that may that tied my damage multiplier
Speaker 5: to my speed. Oh man, So I was doing tons
Speaker 5: of damage, just throwing bones at people or at these
Speaker 5: goblins or whatever, and it like it's got this ridiculous
Speaker 5: ps one esthetic. It's so ugly that it's charming. Yet
Speaker 5: the same time, and I've been playing the hell out
Speaker 5: of that game. I think I got it two weeks ago,
Speaker 5: and it's like, it's the kind of game that you
Speaker 5: pick up and you play for ten minutes and then
Speaker 5: you're done. I've got seven and a half hours in
Speaker 5: this game already. Yeah, and it's it's that it's not
Speaker 5: the kind of game that you spend that much time in,
Speaker 5: but you can't stop playing.
Speaker 2: I know I don't need We're gonna talk about balls
Speaker 2: Pit later, but I don't need another one of those
Speaker 2: when I have so many other big games to get through,
Speaker 2: but also can't wait to hear about that super good
Speaker 2: as someone that spent way too much time with Vampire Spers.
Speaker 1: Yeah, clover Pit is one that's been on the top
Speaker 1: of my wish list for a while. I think Eric
Speaker 1: was showing I was over at his place recently, and
Speaker 1: I think Northern Lion's been streaming it, and that thing
Speaker 1: looks can't put me on blast like this. We can't
Speaker 1: let the people know that you come over. I just
Speaker 1: show you Northern Line videos. That's that's what it is.
Speaker 1: I recently saw a post that was like, dudes love
Speaker 1: showing you YouTube videos. It's like part of their culture
Speaker 1: was like that describes Eric to a t. And they're
Speaker 1: always Northern Line clips. But that's okay, I love Northern Line.
Speaker 1: But yeah, clover Pit has been on my list since
Speaker 1: seeing that. It definitely has that inscription look to it, right,
Speaker 1: like the really yeah you know like.
Speaker 6: Buckshot Yeah yeah, yeah, Like all the textures are wobbly,
Speaker 6: like they kind of just shake like you guys probably
Speaker 6: aren't old enough to remember this.
Speaker 3: Do you guys remember Doctor Katz? Yeah, comedy.
Speaker 2: I love Doctor Katz.
Speaker 5: Okay, Doctor Katz had this squigglevis and that's what.
Speaker 3: Cloverpit reminds me of.
Speaker 2: It's Squigglevision, the Doctor Katz and video games. They call it.
Speaker 4: Finally Yeah, we finally made one.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, Bill, thank you again for joining us today
Speaker 1: on the show. Before we take a quick break, will
Speaker 1: you just go ahead and plug where folks can find
Speaker 1: you online? Social media, Patreon, that kind of stuff.
Speaker 5: Yeah, you can find everything that I do over at
Speaker 5: YouTube dot com, slash, nerd Nest or nerdnest dot tv,
Speaker 5: and I mean you can find me on Blue Sky,
Speaker 5: but I think it's nerdnest dot tv on Blue Sky,
Speaker 5: which is how Alex and I have been talking. Yeah,
Speaker 5: I don't really post to any of the other platforms
Speaker 5: all that much, and honestly, I don't really post a
Speaker 5: Blue Sky all that much, but you know, every pretty
Speaker 5: much everything is on YouTube, YouTube, dot Com, slash nerd, Nest.
Speaker 1: Awesome. Well Bill, thanks for joining us, and hopefully we'll
Speaker 1: have you back on soon.
Speaker 3: Thanks so much. It was really fun talking to you
Speaker 3: guys and meet you guys.
Speaker 1: Yeah, by welcome back everyone to the Game Informer show.
Speaker 1: We've got still a packed episode. We're gonna be getting
Speaker 1: into our Ball x Pit review impressions in just a second,
Speaker 1: as well as Vampire the Masquerade, Bloodlines two, Battlefield six
Speaker 1: by Sweet Carol at the very end, well, we'll we'll
Speaker 1: talk a little little bit about legends, which I think
Speaker 1: we've got like a collective hour in our first impressions,
Speaker 1: Pokemon legends.
Speaker 4: Yes, we're just talking about legends, Yes, various myths.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, the legend I am Legend. I am legend. Yes,
Speaker 1: that's what we're to get into our exclusive review of
Speaker 1: I Am Legend. Guys, let's get into Ball x Pit.
Speaker 1: This is uh from I believe. I know it's being
Speaker 1: published obviously by Devolver Digital, but It's being developed by
Speaker 1: a fellow named Kenny Sun, the Legend. The Legend Kenny
Speaker 1: Sun previously worked on mister Sun's hat Box. That's where
Speaker 1: I know that name, from which I believe, Marcus you
Speaker 1: were a fan of if I if I remember correctly. Oh,
Speaker 1: I've never played it, but maybe it was Alex Stadnick.
Speaker 2: Do you think I would like it?
Speaker 1: I think so, yeah. But ballocks Pit is is Kinney's
Speaker 1: latest game, again being published by Devolver. Is a brick
Speaker 1: breaker ball fusing rogue light that's describes itself on the
Speaker 1: Steam listing, and I think that's pretty dang close to
Speaker 1: to what what the real experience is like. There's also
Speaker 1: a sort of base building harvesting system that you know,
Speaker 1: you continually expand. But the whole premise of the game
Speaker 1: is at the very start, giant sort of meteor hits
Speaker 1: this big city called ball Balon, which is this great
Speaker 1: city looks sort of like Menace tier at from one
Speaker 1: of the rings a little bit, and it creates this
Speaker 1: huge pit and pretty much all of humanity is much
Speaker 1: wiped out save for some you know, loan survivors, and
Speaker 1: you're slowly building up a settlement by diving deeper into
Speaker 1: the pit to find resources and uncover new townsfolk to
Speaker 1: come back to your settlement and kind of help build
Speaker 1: things up. But the main sort of mode that you're
Speaker 1: engaging with most of the time is this brick breaker
Speaker 1: style game where you're playing a character. At the bottom
Speaker 1: of the screen. There's a vertical scrolling battlefield with legions
Speaker 1: of enemies coming down, and you are playing a brick
Speaker 1: baker game where you're throwing special balls that do special effects,
Speaker 1: as well as what they call baby balls, which are
Speaker 1: just sort of like normal balls that bounce around, they
Speaker 1: bounce off balls, they bounce off enemies, and you're slowly
Speaker 1: kind of taking out these hordes of batties while slowly
Speaker 1: upgrading your character from the sort of XP gym that
Speaker 1: you get from defeating those enemies. And there are mid bosses,
Speaker 1: there are are big bosses, and there are you know,
Speaker 1: you have to do runs multiple times to kind of unlock,
Speaker 1: you know, the next area. I'm having a lot of
Speaker 1: fun with it. It's been really my main driver on
Speaker 1: my Steam deck, and I think I probably put probably
Speaker 1: fifteen hours into it at this point, and it's one
Speaker 1: of those games that reminds me of loop Heiro and
Speaker 1: the way that when I first looked at Loopierro on Steam,
Speaker 1: I was like, I heard it's cool, but it's not
Speaker 1: really a looker, and I don't know if it's for me.
Speaker 1: And then I played Loopierro and I was like, oh
Speaker 1: my god, this thing is great. You know, I have
Speaker 1: hav any very similar experience with ball x Pit, where
Speaker 1: it's kind of my radar wasn't sure if I was interested,
Speaker 1: and you know, it was pleasantly surprised. But I'm curious
Speaker 1: Eric and Marcus where you guys are at with the
Speaker 1: game and how you're enjoying it or if you're not
Speaker 1: enjoying it.
Speaker 4: I put it pretty decent amount of time into it
Speaker 4: so far. I I don't know that I would call
Speaker 4: it so it's weird. I don't know that I would
Speaker 4: say I'm like a roguelike guy, But then I play
Speaker 4: basically every roguelike that comes out and have an opinion
Speaker 4: on it, so I guess maybe I.
Speaker 1: Am like a roguelike guy. I just look.
Speaker 4: I got into FTL and Binding of Isaac when they
Speaker 4: were both like coming out, and I think it just
Speaker 4: like it hooked and and I bring that up because
Speaker 4: I do think Ballpit. Well, first of all, I'll call
Speaker 4: it Ballpit. Much like Hunter Hunter I believe, I believe
Speaker 4: the ex is silent.
Speaker 1: But in the review and the review, I did ball
Speaker 1: x pit and then I recorded some alternate takes with
Speaker 1: just ballpick ball, cross.
Speaker 4: Pit yeah, all times pit yeah pit. Yeah. So with Ballpit,
Speaker 4: it's been really interesting. I do think it's a really
Speaker 4: cool game. Like, like to be clear, I am, I'm
Speaker 4: very warm on it. I do kind of wish some
Speaker 4: of the base building stuff was a little bit not
Speaker 4: the way it was, just because there's I think as
Speaker 4: that starts to grow, it's it's novel at first, but
Speaker 4: then kind of started to degrade on me over time.
Speaker 4: But I only bring that up because I think it's
Speaker 4: a really clever idea, and that idea plays out very
Speaker 4: well when you're actually in the pit and climbing through stuff.
Speaker 4: Because you brought up that it's brick Breaker, it's a
Speaker 4: little bit of Pinball, it's a little bit of Vampire Survivors.
Speaker 4: I think there's a lot of touchstones that if you've
Speaker 4: played any sort of run based game in the last
Speaker 4: five to ten years, you're going to see that here.
Speaker 4: But what it's the reminded me the most of just
Speaker 4: in terms of general concept and idea, has been stuff
Speaker 4: like Galaga, where you're kind of managing this ever approaching
Speaker 4: wall of enemies, and yeah, there's kind of just always
Speaker 4: constant pressure on you, the player and the There's an
Speaker 4: interesting push and pull between how much you are willing
Speaker 4: to see ground or try to push forward and play
Speaker 4: the way that you want to play to then risk
Speaker 4: it them eventually getting to the bottom and starting to
Speaker 4: hit you, because once they get to the bottom of
Speaker 4: the screen, or once they get close enough because you
Speaker 4: can't actually walk forward on the screen, and then enemies
Speaker 4: if they're in melee range, will start to actually attack you.
Speaker 4: Because of it, you can kind of play around with that.
Speaker 4: You can play around that space. And there's a lot
Speaker 4: of balls that I think do more interesting things than
Speaker 4: I thought there would be. I kind of went in
Speaker 4: expecting like, Okay, you're going to have chain lightning ball,
Speaker 4: You're going to have some sort of damage over time ball,
Speaker 4: You're going to have a ball that turns into more balls,
Speaker 4: because that all seems natural, and those are all there.
Speaker 4: I think the more interesting parts of this game to
Speaker 4: me are the ones that say, Okay, this ball will
Speaker 4: have higher krit chance if you hit it hit something
Speaker 4: from the right hand side, or this ball will do
Speaker 4: more damage, but once it hits the back of the
Speaker 4: screen and starts bouncing back down, now it's going to
Speaker 4: do less damage. Or conversely, this ball does less damage
Speaker 4: until it hits a wall and then it starts picking
Speaker 4: up damage the more it bounces. And you can combine
Speaker 4: that with things like the wind ball, which kind of
Speaker 4: pass It moves slower, but it passes through enemies instead
Speaker 4: of bouncing.
Speaker 1: Off of them.
Speaker 4: You can do really cool interesting things with that. I
Speaker 4: think the physics of this game, the actual feeling of
Speaker 4: balls ricocheting around and how you can manipulate that to
Speaker 4: do really cool things, is one of the more interesting
Speaker 4: and novel parts of Ballpit that have really like resonated
Speaker 4: with me. I think it would have been very easy
Speaker 4: for this game to just be You're playing brick breaker
Speaker 4: and you get like cooler ways to break the bricks,
Speaker 4: but it's kind of just that. And I think the
Speaker 4: ways in which the developers have thought to expand the
Speaker 4: playspase of brick breaking Galaga style like very retro feeling
Speaker 4: concepts and infuse so much new novel into it really
Speaker 4: really works for me, and I find that really really compelling.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, Marcus, I'm curious. I'm curious to your
Speaker 1: thoughts before I dive into a rabbit hole that I
Speaker 1: was about to go.
Speaker 2: And No, it's a lot of it's a lot of fun,
Speaker 2: I said earlier. I it's got a lot of the
Speaker 2: same hooks that Vampire Survivors had in me of just
Speaker 2: this kind of like endlessly replayable, but very easy to
Speaker 2: play because it's an auto shooter, like you're just shooting
Speaker 2: the balls, like so literally all you have to do
Speaker 2: is just move the character.
Speaker 4: So uh oh, I you're not wrong, However, it is shooting.
Speaker 4: Auto shooting is something you toggle. And I will say
Speaker 4: something that did impress me was it starts you off,
Speaker 4: not letting you auto shoot, and then you turn it
Speaker 4: on and I'm like, well, why would I ever turn
Speaker 4: this off? And then you start to get some balls
Speaker 4: that make you go like maybe I don't just want
Speaker 4: to auto shoot? Yeah, I think that's pretty interesting.
Speaker 2: Okay, Yeah i'ven't. I don't think I've encountered balls that
Speaker 2: would have made me question that. So okay, that's interesting.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there are some balls that deal damage to you
Speaker 1: when you shoot them.
Speaker 2: Oh okay, gotcha?
Speaker 1: Huh yeah. And so if you have auto shoot on,
Speaker 1: you're just like slowly you.
Speaker 2: Know, yeah, because I turned it off. Yeah, I turned
Speaker 2: on auto immediately because I was like, I'm playing a
Speaker 2: controller and I was like, oh, I don't want to
Speaker 2: hold down to the trigger the whole time. It's like,
Speaker 2: I'm just gonna play it like it's Vampire Survivors and
Speaker 2: just have it, you know, I just want to focus.
Speaker 1: Most builds you can get away with auto.
Speaker 4: I think that I would then draw comparisons to things
Speaker 4: like Binding of Isaac, where the first time I played
Speaker 4: Binding of Isaac, I was like, why would I not
Speaker 4: just walk around with the fire button held down all
Speaker 4: the time? Why would I ever use my bombs to
Speaker 4: not just blow things up?
Speaker 1: Why would I? You know?
Speaker 4: And then suddenly you start to understand that the play
Speaker 4: space is a lot deeper than you think it's going
Speaker 4: to be, but also that they're doing more things with
Speaker 4: those verbs than you normally expect a video game to do.
Speaker 4: I think a lot of video games, broadly speaking, love
Speaker 4: the idea of you do thing and then you do
Speaker 4: more of thing. But I think What often sets a
Speaker 4: really good run based game apart for me is where
Speaker 4: it makes you have those moments of careful consideration where
Speaker 4: you say, I need to play differently than I do
Speaker 4: for every other run, where I need to like consider
Speaker 4: my playset and my play style a little bit differently,
Speaker 4: because now I'm playing something that is going to both
Speaker 4: encourage me to play differently and reward me for playing differently.
Speaker 4: And I do think Ballpit nails that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, It's there's a primal satisfaction that I have and
Speaker 2: probably all of us do to some degree of just
Speaker 2: watching balls bounce around and break up, just like I've
Speaker 2: always really loved the Arcanoid and this is just like
Speaker 2: this is basically like fancy, more involved Arcanoid to me. Yeah,
Speaker 2: with a little bit of Tetris, because I think of
Speaker 2: Tetris when I see the kind of like enemy scrolling
Speaker 2: closer and closer and how but instead of like reaching
Speaker 2: the top is bad, reaching the bottom is bad, it's
Speaker 2: like reverse Tetris. This game is so weird in terms
Speaker 2: of the different sort of like things it takes. It's
Speaker 2: like the watch a McCall a bar of video games.
Speaker 2: Just like it's got a little bit of everything, and
Speaker 2: it manages to blend together in a way that is
Speaker 2: it's amazing how kind of like quickly you kind of
Speaker 2: pick up what it's putting down for how sort of
Speaker 2: like for how many different things it sort of mashes
Speaker 2: together that you won't think on paper it wouldn't work,
Speaker 2: But then you only need to play like around and
Speaker 2: you start to go like, oh, oh, okay, I think
Speaker 2: I get what this is cause and I think when
Speaker 2: you just watch a trailer it's even hard to sort
Speaker 2: of kind of like understand completely what you're kind of
Speaker 2: getting into. I think once you get in there, And
Speaker 2: I think it's one of the reason why I Steam
Speaker 2: Demo did so well when it was available on Next Fest,
Speaker 2: Like I played the crap out of that, and thankfully
Speaker 2: your progress carries over from the Steam Demo, which is
Speaker 2: greats Like I just fired up the full game and
Speaker 2: it's just like, hey, we saw you played demo. Here
Speaker 2: you are just start off where you were. But yeah,
Speaker 2: it's uh, it's fun. Like it's it's one of those
Speaker 2: games you get I get so lost in, like you
Speaker 2: get that zen state when you're like on a really
Speaker 2: good run and you're watching all of your balls kind
Speaker 2: of like do what you want them to do. And
Speaker 2: I also get really excited with like it does the
Speaker 2: Vampires of Ivors like weapon fusion stuff. So every time
Speaker 2: you pick one of those up, I'm just like, oh man,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna like I would just combine things together just
Speaker 2: to see what happens, not even like I don't know
Speaker 2: if this has any strategic advantage, like for this current situation,
Speaker 2: but I just want to see what it does because
Speaker 2: I haven't mixed these two things yet. And then even
Speaker 2: when it's something that's like Okay, I don't know if
Speaker 2: that did exactly wanted to do, it's still like a
Speaker 2: it's fun to just experiment.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like a discovery element exactly. Yes, that that
Speaker 1: piece reminds me of Alchemy, the old mobile game that
Speaker 1: people would play where you would have different elements and
Speaker 1: you would just like combine them to unlock another element.
Speaker 1: And I think in that game they were like over
Speaker 1: three hundred of them. In this game, there are significantly less,
Speaker 1: which is kind of a bummer because I think that
Speaker 1: is my favorite piece of this game, is the fusion system,
Speaker 1: and I think like as as you go, it kind
Speaker 1: of slows down quite a bit.
Speaker 4: I do think one thing that I kind of have
Speaker 4: with this game in regards to that is that you
Speaker 4: have two different kinds of so for the people at home,
Speaker 4: you have a ball, so you pick up the chain
Speaker 4: lightning ball or the frost ball, the one that freezes
Speaker 4: random pieces, which I think is probably one of my
Speaker 4: favorite ones, just because the ability to stop the line
Speaker 4: from advancing is very helpful. You level it up three
Speaker 4: times and then it has hit basically it's max level.
Speaker 4: But once it's at that max level, you can either
Speaker 4: I forget which one is, which there's one that is
Speaker 4: combining it with another max level ball to kind of
Speaker 4: just stick the two things that those balls do together
Speaker 4: to make them do the same thing together. And I
Speaker 4: think that one once you do that, it is kind
Speaker 4: of completed. It is finished, or you can fuse them
Speaker 4: into something completely brand new that will kind of have
Speaker 4: elements of both, but maybe do something that is kind
Speaker 4: of brand new. I think one of the ones that
Speaker 4: I remember getting that I really thought was interesting was
Speaker 4: it gave the ball an AoE around it that was
Speaker 4: kind of burning the whole time, and it did some
Speaker 4: really cool stuff with that.
Speaker 1: That one.
Speaker 4: You can then level up and I think eventually fuse
Speaker 4: with other things as well, And I ended up getting
Speaker 4: just a little annoyed by that, because then if you're
Speaker 4: trying to min max, if you're trying to say, I'm
Speaker 4: making the most use of every single one of my
Speaker 4: limited slots, because you have a limited number of slots
Speaker 4: for how many balls you can have and how many
Speaker 4: passives you can have. So if you're really trying to
Speaker 4: max that stuff out, suddenly one is technically a better
Speaker 4: and slot option than the other one because it can
Speaker 4: get stronger, it can continue to grow over the course
Speaker 4: of the game, whereas other ones kind of the evolutionary
Speaker 4: path stops, and that in the same way the Vampire
Speaker 4: Survivor is. The one thing that annoys me in that
Speaker 4: game is when you have to pick up something that
Speaker 4: isn't going to then play into an evolution of a
Speaker 4: weapon somewhere down the line. I go like, I'm not
Speaker 4: playing optimally. I don't have the best possible build in
Speaker 4: this moment. Is this run just crap now? And it's
Speaker 4: it's good to force yourself to not play that way
Speaker 4: every single time, And in other games, I think they
Speaker 4: give you ways of forcing you to not play optimally.
Speaker 4: Every single time. But I think when it dangles it
Speaker 4: over your head like that, it does like annoy me
Speaker 4: just a little bit where I'm like, ah, just just
Speaker 4: let me fuse them and make something new and then
Speaker 4: keep growing that that way instead of having the path
Speaker 4: cut off suddenly. It doesn't It doesn't feel great when
Speaker 4: I'm like I had to settle for this because I
Speaker 4: just needed an extra slot, I needed more firepower, and
Speaker 4: then like, oh, I'm just have a suboptimal build now
Speaker 4: and I hope I can kind of squeak out something
Speaker 4: with this.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I guess that's a consequence of just the rang
Speaker 2: with the power ups, like you don't know what you're
Speaker 2: gonna get until you get it, just like, oh, well
Speaker 2: this is the one I yeah needed, but I gotta
Speaker 2: roll with it.
Speaker 4: I do think their way of doing rerolls in the
Speaker 4: game is really interesting because it's the currency that you
Speaker 4: want to bring back to the base to spend on
Speaker 4: certain buildings and stuff like that. So the fact that
Speaker 4: you're kind of gambling with it in that way where
Speaker 4: you say, Okay, I don't want any of these available balls,
Speaker 4: but it's going to cost me a decent chunk of
Speaker 4: change to reroll. Do I want to bring that money
Speaker 4: back or do I want to spend it for the
Speaker 4: chance to stay down here longer and get more cash.
Speaker 4: I do think that's kind of compelling. I think that's interesting.
Speaker 2: When you I haven't done a thing where you retry
Speaker 2: a run. I usually just go back to the base,
Speaker 2: Like what is that?
Speaker 4: Do you just you start over again?
Speaker 1: You just do a new run?
Speaker 2: Oh okay. I didn't know if it's like like with
Speaker 2: like risking anything by not just taking whatever I got
Speaker 2: back back to base. I probably I'm surprised I haven't
Speaker 2: reatryause I'm kind of with you, Eric, were like the
Speaker 2: base building stuff, It's like it's like fine, it's like novel,
Speaker 2: but it's definitely like I don't necessarily look forward to
Speaker 2: going back there. I just kind of keep doing ball
Speaker 2: runs and then I just kind of ye, I kind
Speaker 2: of like treat the the base building stuff as sort
Speaker 2: of like a means to an end of like, well,
Speaker 2: I guess I need this to to upgrade.
Speaker 3: Get that progression.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And I think Eric, you're talking specifically about the
Speaker 1: reroll the items that you're getting in.
Speaker 4: The world, and talk about rerrolling the items that you get,
Speaker 4: which that that is for gold, which is one of
Speaker 4: the resources you can get in the pit, that you
Speaker 4: then bring back to your base to spend on, say
Speaker 4: building a new building where a character might live. And
Speaker 4: then you have to you basically have workers who are
Speaker 4: ex balls that you fire off, and you play a
Speaker 4: little pinball game where you, like dark Cloud build out
Speaker 4: a town and then kind of bounce your workers off
Speaker 4: different resources and buildings to either construct the buildings or
Speaker 4: harvest the resources that then turn into more things that
Speaker 4: you invest into that. I do think that's an interesting
Speaker 4: inner loop of the game. I just don't know that
Speaker 4: I particularly love. It starts to feel samey after a while.
Speaker 4: You just kind of get into a monotonous loop of
Speaker 4: it where you're going, Okay, well let me arrange everything
Speaker 4: that I have that needs to be built.
Speaker 1: I'm constantly rearranging things.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and not in a way that feels very exciting.
Speaker 4: I didn't feel like it's.
Speaker 2: Yeah, kind of like this was already like I need
Speaker 2: to expand this land because I probably should have the money. Yeah,
Speaker 2: do you guys have a guess have a favorite character?
Speaker 2: Like I just unlocked a third character. I haven't used
Speaker 2: them yet, but the second the guys.
Speaker 4: I like the twins a lot, the ones that both
Speaker 4: shoot a ball and basically invert the shot depending on
Speaker 4: where you're aiming. They're they're pretty fun.
Speaker 1: I think I've got like eight characters unlocked, and there's
Speaker 1: a ton to unlock. I have a guy who he's
Speaker 1: a shield bearer, and his shield is like the classic
Speaker 1: brick breaker platform that you would typically like scroll back
Speaker 1: and forth to hit a ball. It's yeah, like yes,
Speaker 1: sort of yeah, yeah, like a pong paddle. Yeah, like
Speaker 1: in the game Pong, and like the platforms that you
Speaker 1: move around the game the game the video game Pong,
Speaker 1: not like ping pong paddles, but yeah, like a pong paddle,
Speaker 1: legally distinct Pong. Yeah. And so he his bonus is
Speaker 1: essentially if you bounce balls that bounce off his shield
Speaker 1: gain extra damage, and so you're kind of like moving
Speaker 1: your baby balls around and like pushing kind of you're
Speaker 1: almost like shoveling enemies back. Because there's also like a
Speaker 1: little bit of melee damage. I think that he can
Speaker 1: do or you can modify it eventually to do damage
Speaker 1: when you're in melee range. And so that's an interesting build.
Speaker 1: I do, like I was talking to Leo Vader about this,
Speaker 1: and it's funny. Leo told me he was like, and
Speaker 1: I'm curious, I need to listen to Two Men Max
Speaker 1: to see if his house opinions ended up shaping. But
Speaker 1: it was like the first day or two we had
Speaker 1: copy of the game, and I was like, we went
Speaker 1: on a we had like a double date plane and
Speaker 1: was like, hey, have you had a chance to play
Speaker 1: Ballpit And he was like, yeah, I don't know if
Speaker 1: the game is fun or if it's just hard to
Speaker 1: put down. And he was like, I don't know if
Speaker 1: I mean too cerebral, but he was telling me and
Speaker 1: we kind of were talking about there's a character un Locke,
Speaker 1: who just auto picks all of your upgrades, and so
Speaker 1: it's the most turn off your brain. You don't even
Speaker 1: pick your upgrades or evolutions. You literally just like aim
Speaker 1: and moves.
Speaker 2: Kind of fun actually, just kind of having to roll
Speaker 2: with whatever happens and just make the most of it.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 4: I remember when when Auto Chess started and people were like,
Speaker 4: why would you ever play that game? You don't even
Speaker 4: control your units. You just put him down and watch
Speaker 4: him fight, And I'm like, dude, there's nothing better than
Speaker 4: just you put thing down and get immediate feedback and
Speaker 4: then slightly tinker with it and then put thing down
Speaker 4: and get immediate feedback.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I'm a Final Fantasy twelve defender because I love the
Speaker 2: Gambit system so much and I felt like when I
Speaker 2: got to the point where the party just took care
Speaker 2: of everything with minimal input for me, I was like,
Speaker 2: this is gaming right here.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's really the manager.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you're like, I've set this up so well, this.
Speaker 1: Is my reward. Yeah yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4: Some of the best gaming is just middle management.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Oh yeah, I need that. I need that bad.
Speaker 1: I need to check out that grocery store simulator because
Speaker 1: that's probably real good.
Speaker 4: No, that's that's You're not middle manager in that because
Speaker 4: you're doing all the stuff.
Speaker 1: Is that not the final boss? Like you find the middle.
Speaker 4: Management, you need the one you need like factorio where
Speaker 4: you're you're putting down the stuff that does the stuff,
Speaker 4: and ya the one that make sure that everybody's doing
Speaker 4: the stuff right. You know, you gotta get back into satisfactory.
Speaker 4: Oh man, there's okay, so this is kind of a
Speaker 4: crazy pivot, but I think someone told me that there's
Speaker 4: you know, arc Knights or R Knights the anime one
Speaker 4: of the mini anime games out there, and specifically anime
Speaker 4: gotcha style games. I think there's a new one coming
Speaker 4: out that has like Factorio elements in it, and I
Speaker 4: was like, that's messed up. That's why would you put
Speaker 4: Genschen in Factorio? That's that's too much scratching my brain
Speaker 4: all at the same time.
Speaker 1: That's dibolical. Well, Eric, I'm gonna kind of put you
Speaker 1: on the spot and I want I want you to
Speaker 1: talk aboutause I didn't do that to myself. Yeah, Vampire
Speaker 1: the Masquerade Bloodlines too transition to that game, you are
Speaker 1: a massive Bloodlines one fan. Uh and and though you
Speaker 1: weren't quite working here when we went on the cover
Speaker 1: story for that game, you were kind of finishing up
Speaker 1: interview phase, we did reach out to you as like
Speaker 1: a behind the scenes hey, we got some questions for you,
Speaker 1: Charles and I did as we were kind of prepping
Speaker 1: for that story, and so shout out to you for
Speaker 1: helping prepping us with that cover story, working for free
Speaker 1: for like twenty minutes on a Discord call. But you're
Speaker 1: kind of our resident Bloodlines expert. I would say out
Speaker 1: of anybody out of anybody else on staff, and so
Speaker 1: I kind of hold your opinion. I hold your opinion highly.
Speaker 1: So I want to know what you think about this game.
Speaker 2: Yeah, before you say what you're gonna say, can we
Speaker 2: acknowledge that it's kind of wild this game is actually
Speaker 2: coming out this week.
Speaker 4: Yes, that That's where I was going to start, is like,
Speaker 4: we need to talk about the path that Vampire Bloodlines
Speaker 4: two took here, because that is an important part of
Speaker 4: the story. Vampire blood Lines two was originally set up
Speaker 4: to be the you never thought it would happen seql
Speaker 4: to a game that was kind of a cult classic
Speaker 4: of its time that got overshadowed by many other games
Speaker 4: that came out around it's whendow. I believe Half Life
Speaker 4: two came out around the same time that Bloodlines one did,
Speaker 4: and Bloodlines one, even though it was made by a
Speaker 4: very legendary studio, kind of was a bit of a
Speaker 4: buggy mess at launch, had very notorious technical problems, and
Speaker 4: despite being this incredible story, an incredible world, incredible atmosphere,
Speaker 4: just was kind of against all odds and led to
Speaker 4: the closure of that entire venture and was just an infamous,
Speaker 4: like almost made to be a cult classic type story.
Speaker 4: You know how you hear about the production of something
Speaker 4: and you're like, oh, okay, that's the story around. It
Speaker 4: was too good for it not to become this, this gem,
Speaker 4: this thing that people would appreciate later. And it almost
Speaker 4: makes sense in hindsight. But so Bloodlines, two potential sequel,
Speaker 4: people coming back from the original team to work on
Speaker 4: a follow up seemed like, oh my god. We never
Speaker 4: thought this would happen. We never thought this was possible.
Speaker 4: Over the years, development troubles ensued. There was a demo
Speaker 4: of the game that was playable at some point that
Speaker 4: you can still go find the footage on YouTube of it.
Speaker 4: But eventually the studio behind it was taken off the project.
Speaker 4: The project was put in limbo, and finally it was
Speaker 4: given to the Chinese Room, which is the studio that
Speaker 4: worked on a number of horror games. Still Wakes the
Speaker 4: Deep and things like that that you might know of
Speaker 4: not really done what I would say are RPG's action
Speaker 4: RPGs in the past.
Speaker 2: Not In fact, you might say they've done the hard
Speaker 2: opposite of that, dear Esther and was that everybody's gone
Speaker 2: to the rapture.
Speaker 4: Definitely have narrative chops not quite as experienced, at least
Speaker 4: in their published work when it comes to more action
Speaker 4: of all stuff. And I mean, I'll be the first
Speaker 4: one to tell you that the worst part of Bloodlines
Speaker 4: one was the combat. It's bad not what you show
Speaker 4: up to that game for. It's a means to an
Speaker 4: end in that game. And with Bloodlines too, my feeling
Speaker 4: has largely been that is that I think the story
Speaker 4: is interesting. I don't know that it has hooked me
Speaker 4: the way that Bloodlines one hooked me at this point,
Speaker 4: I will say, at this time of playing, we will
Speaker 4: have a review up. By the time that this review
Speaker 4: is out. Charles is writing that review and has put
Speaker 4: more full, complete thoughts. I've put about probably somewhere in
Speaker 4: the vicinity of seven hours or so into the game
Speaker 4: at this point personally, and I think the thing that
Speaker 4: has struck me the most is just that it's definitely
Speaker 4: doing vampire things, and it knows what the vampire appeal
Speaker 4: is in this specific mythology, in the ways it talks
Speaker 4: about how the vampire society works, in the ways that
Speaker 4: it leans into a lot of the stuff that I
Speaker 4: think even broadly of vampire you know, just fiction will enjoy.
Speaker 4: You know, Vampire the Masquerade is all about the masquerade.
Speaker 4: It's about the idea of what does it mean for
Speaker 4: vampires to live amongst people? And they have to maintain
Speaker 4: the masquerade yea. And so in this game, the first
Speaker 4: section you're in, you're an elder vampire that's awaking from torpoor,
Speaker 4: which is kind of a long sleep, and you break
Speaker 4: the masquerade because you are basically blood starved and there's
Speaker 4: a bunch of cops that are all kind of flooding
Speaker 4: into this building and you just kind of gotta go
Speaker 4: nuts on all of them. And so that is considered
Speaker 4: a break of the masquerade because pretty soon, you know,
Speaker 4: work gets out, newspapers get onto they're like.
Speaker 1: Oh this supernatural killing.
Speaker 2: People were torn apart.
Speaker 1: In this building.
Speaker 4: It's like that's a break of the maskerade. People are
Speaker 4: going to get suspicious, and so you kind of get
Speaker 4: locked into all this while you also have what I'm
Speaker 4: going to call is basically a Johnny Silverhands in your head.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: The Yeah, you have a the disembodied voice of a
Speaker 4: Malcavean vampire in your head kind of talking to you
Speaker 4: throughout the game. And the way that if you played cyberpunk,
Speaker 4: you had Johnny Silverhand, or you played Batman Arkham. Was
Speaker 4: it night where Joker was following you everywhere?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's the same thing.
Speaker 4: And so your your vampire fire is an elder vampire
Speaker 4: and you're kind of trying to figure out what's going
Speaker 4: on while you're also trying to figure out why there's
Speaker 4: this dude embedded in your brain. And they use that,
Speaker 4: and especially the Malcavian aspect. Malcavian vampires have kind of weird,
Speaker 4: surreal but like ability to tell the future and see
Speaker 4: through truth and kind of do that, but they're also
Speaker 4: kind of spacey and weird and say weird things all
Speaker 4: the time. They play with that a lot to do
Speaker 4: some really cool storytelling things. And the vampire politics are
Speaker 4: pretty good too. I like vampire politics. I think it's
Speaker 4: really fun when you get into the stuff of there's
Speaker 4: the kind of hierarchy of vampire rulers, the camarilla who
Speaker 4: enforce the Masquerade, who are kind of the established power,
Speaker 4: the old money of the vampire world. And then you
Speaker 4: have the anarchs, who are kind of the new bloods
Speaker 4: who want to support thin bloods who are kind of
Speaker 4: weaker vampires. Of a newer generation that aren't considered as
Speaker 4: strong as older vampires are, even older vampires like you
Speaker 4: are as an elder, and it's a lot of really
Speaker 4: interesting parallels to class, to society, to all that kind
Speaker 4: of stuff that vampire can really dig into and have
Speaker 4: some fun with. I think when this game is doing that,
Speaker 4: it's doing really cool stuff with it. My problem is
Speaker 4: just not doing enough of it, and a lot of
Speaker 4: it gets bogged down in kind of you need to
Speaker 4: go here because that's where the combat set pieces, and
Speaker 4: that's where the cool thing is, and you have this big,
Speaker 4: open world, but it's not fun to move around in,
Speaker 4: especially because they give you a lot of movement tools,
Speaker 4: but a lot of the movement tools you can't use
Speaker 4: because if people see you flying and leaping up buildings,
Speaker 4: that's a break of the masquerade, and so you have
Speaker 4: to be a little bit sneaky about it. But even
Speaker 4: the ways that you kind of would lure somebody over
Speaker 4: to feed on them, to refill your blood gage, to
Speaker 4: use more of your meters and more of your abilities,
Speaker 4: and things like that aren't very well explained to you
Speaker 4: and aren't really intuitive in the ways that you would
Speaker 4: use them. And so what it ends up feeling is
Speaker 4: like I'm going from combat arena to combat arena in
Speaker 4: this open world city and then occasionally getting cut scenes where.
Speaker 1: I'm making.
Speaker 4: Somewhat interesting narrative choices. I know that one thing that
Speaker 4: Charles said to me was he did not feel like
Speaker 4: it was immediately clear that he was making a lot
Speaker 4: of choices that actually had an impact on the story.
Speaker 4: He and I are playing two very different characters. He's
Speaker 4: going more of the I don't care an arc route.
Speaker 4: I've been playing more of the Camarilla route, and I
Speaker 4: will say I've had the exact same experience. So take
Speaker 4: with that what you will. But uh, I've I think
Speaker 4: there is there's enough here that it does scratch a
Speaker 4: certain itch for me in terms of just enjoying the
Speaker 4: vampire world. But I also think it is abundantly clear
Speaker 4: that this is a game that was made from the
Speaker 4: bones of other games, that was made from the attempts
Speaker 4: to It's very clear in the same way that when
Speaker 4: I played Vailguard, I was like, you can tell in
Speaker 4: some ways that this game's been in development for a
Speaker 4: very long time. There's just kind of lingering aspects of
Speaker 4: it that feel like, this doesn't make total sense for
Speaker 4: what they're doing right now, but it would have made
Speaker 4: sense that the game was slightly different. There's kind of
Speaker 4: that here where you have this really big open world
Speaker 4: and all this cool stuff, but for a large portion
Speaker 4: of the early section, the open world is just there
Speaker 4: for you to run between waypoints in. There's not really
Speaker 4: anything interesting happening in it. You can find occasionally some
Speaker 4: people that you can feed on that will give you
Speaker 4: bonus blood points that kind of go towards learning other
Speaker 4: resonance skills.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, is it.
Speaker 2: Closer to something like Mafia's open world where it's like
Speaker 2: their open worlds have never been interesting that Yeah, it's
Speaker 2: been about like no, just just get to the next mission.
Speaker 2: It's just background dressing.
Speaker 3: Really.
Speaker 4: I would absolutely draw comparisons to Mafay the Old Country,
Speaker 4: which I played some of earlier this year and felt
Speaker 4: the same way, where there's an open world here, but
Speaker 4: I don't necessarily know that it adds anything to the
Speaker 4: experience right exact. Yeah, it suddenly makes me question like,
Speaker 4: is would this just function better as a linear game,
Speaker 4: as a more directed game, or even just not bothering
Speaker 4: with throwing me out into the open world and then
Speaker 4: putting me back in, and a lot of the open
Speaker 4: world stuff ends up being So you choose a clan,
Speaker 4: which also feels weird because they kind of acknowledge that
Speaker 4: you're an elder vampire and that means that you have
Speaker 4: a lot of different powers. Usually your clan would determine
Speaker 4: what kind of powers you have the same way that
Speaker 4: a class would determine them in a D and D
Speaker 4: campaign or something like that. Here you choose kind of
Speaker 4: what clan you've been sired into, but also you can
Speaker 4: kind of just learn the other ones as you absorb
Speaker 4: blood resonance from feeding on the right people and then
Speaker 4: spending them on that stuff, more or less.
Speaker 2: Just choosing your starter clan, but you're the other stuff anyway.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and I think some of the abilities are kind
Speaker 4: of novel I chose. I wanted to pick something that
Speaker 4: I don't normally do when I played Bloodlines. One my
Speaker 4: favorite class to play is the tor Door because that's
Speaker 4: just like your charisma class. That's your smooth talking narrative
Speaker 4: class that loves to kind of talk their way out
Speaker 4: of things. But you have a lot of other interesting
Speaker 4: options there. If you do a no sfaratu, which is
Speaker 4: literally your You look like the old movie monster vampires,
Speaker 4: and so if you get seen by a normal person,
Speaker 4: that's a break of the massquarade can't be seen. And
Speaker 4: there are no Sparatu in Blood Lines two, but you
Speaker 4: can't play as a no Saratu. There are Malcavian characters,
Speaker 4: and one of the things in Blood Lines one was
Speaker 4: you could play as a Malcavian and you would get hallucinations,
Speaker 4: and you would hear voices and you get weird dialogue
Speaker 4: choices that would kind of hint an almost fourth wall
Speaker 4: break at various times. There are Malcavian characters in Blood
Speaker 4: Lines two. You play as a Malcavian character in very
Speaker 4: specific story segments, but you can't be a Malcavian in
Speaker 4: that moment. All of the choices that you make around
Speaker 4: your clans seem like they just funnel you into what
Speaker 4: kind of combat you want to play. And I think
Speaker 4: that's the biggest miss for me, is that the appeal
Speaker 4: of Blood Lines one was, Yes, you can choose to
Speaker 4: be a Bruha and you can play through that game
Speaker 4: as just a ripper of just like tearing people apart
Speaker 4: with your claws and.
Speaker 1: Things like that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, or you can choose to be you know, a
Speaker 4: Malcavian and like a very different narrative experience and then
Speaker 4: have like difficulty added because now you're going to have
Speaker 4: less combat tools, fewer combat tools to work with. Everything
Speaker 4: in this game feels very based around the combat and
Speaker 4: you are going to fight and you're going to have to.
Speaker 4: It reminds me almost of when dis X Human Revolution
Speaker 4: came out and a lot of people had critiques around
Speaker 4: you know, you could do cool stuff with a lot
Speaker 4: of the narrative in that game, but ultimately you're going
Speaker 4: to get siloed into fighting in certain areas no matter what. Right,
Speaker 4: same thing here, only you're not really getting any of
Speaker 4: the narrative anyways, because outside of a few times when
Speaker 4: the game kind of acknowledged that, oh you're you're a Tremere.
Speaker 4: I played a Tremare in Bloodlines Too, which is like
Speaker 4: a blood sorcerer kind of. There's one character who's like, oh,
Speaker 4: that's why you're stinky, because like the stereotype around the
Speaker 4: Tremare is that they just love to be around blood
Speaker 4: and they read their books all the time. They don't
Speaker 4: really care for themselves hygienically, and that was about it.
Speaker 4: It's about all I've had so far in terms of
Speaker 4: recognition of my clan in the first seven hours or so. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 4: I got called stinky, But.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4: It just it bums me out because I think when
Speaker 4: I think back to Bloodlines one again, one of the
Speaker 4: big things in that game is is it gives you
Speaker 4: a lot of almost imsign type elements. I think, as
Speaker 4: much as it is a CRPG, it also has a
Speaker 4: lot to share in common with games like dis X,
Speaker 4: where you have multiple ways of kind of approaching different encounters,
Speaker 4: of handling them in different ways of stealthing or talking
Speaker 4: or doing combat. And here the play space feels much
Speaker 4: more narrow, much more head towards the combat. I don't
Speaker 4: think the combats all that interesting either. I think the
Speaker 4: perry system doesn't feel great. I think a lot of
Speaker 4: the combat abilities don't feel great for some reason. You
Speaker 4: don't you don't pick up guns, so you don't have weapons.
Speaker 2: At all that you'll have the franchise.
Speaker 4: In Vampire blood Lines one, you could absolutely pick up
Speaker 4: weapons and you know, keep a keep a few things
Speaker 4: on you for for when things got messy, and usually
Speaker 4: in that case you would also use your clause because
Speaker 4: a vampire's claws are usually going to be more powerful
Speaker 4: than most other stuff you have in that game. Sure,
Speaker 4: but it is still acknowledged. And even in Bloodlines too,
Speaker 4: they acknowledge. You know, there's a section where Fire wakes
Speaker 4: up and is talking to some vampires, is like, hey, like,
Speaker 4: what's different in this time right now? And one of
Speaker 4: the characters says, guns are pretty powerful right now, like you,
Speaker 4: they've they've gotten a lot stronger in the hundred years
Speaker 4: that you've been asleep. You know, they're not muskets anymore.
Speaker 4: You might want to be afraid of them a little
Speaker 4: bit because one of the ways to actually kill a
Speaker 4: vampire in the Vampire series is to take their head off,
Speaker 4: And boy, howdy are there shotguns and things like that
Speaker 4: in this game that can absolutely do that, and so
Speaker 4: so it's weird to acknowledge that. But then what Fire
Speaker 4: has is basically a telekinesis that lets you grab something
Speaker 4: and it's kind of your way of picking things up,
Speaker 4: so you can throw bottles and bricks to distract people,
Speaker 4: instell sections, or you can just hit them with it,
Speaker 4: or you can like telekinesis a gun, and then Fire
Speaker 4: will like point it and shoot it with his telekinesis like,
Speaker 4: what if Jean Gray fired a pistol by just thinking
Speaker 4: about doing it right, like that.
Speaker 3: Sort of thing.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and that feels like a very strange decision in
Speaker 4: this moment, And I guess the idea was that they
Speaker 4: want you to be kind of in the moment and
Speaker 4: finding characters and not relying on just oh, I'm playing
Speaker 4: a shooter. But guns still end up being a very
Speaker 4: crucial part of big combat arenas where you're dealing with
Speaker 4: a lot of enemies that are all swarming you at
Speaker 4: the same time. You might not be a combat class.
Speaker 4: It's built for that, so you might need to be
Speaker 4: knocking people's weapons out of their hands, picking them up
Speaker 4: and firing them back at them and stuff like that.
Speaker 4: As a tremeer, I was having to do that a
Speaker 4: lot because my other move was just curse somebody with
Speaker 4: a blood curse. That makes it so once they you
Speaker 4: have to like kind of concentrate and kind of your
Speaker 4: casting magic on them, and then once it's casted, the
Speaker 4: next thing they get hit by will just kind of
Speaker 4: make them explode in a blood explosion and deal damage
Speaker 4: to everybody else around them. So I would kind of
Speaker 4: curse somebody from the stealth from the Shadows and throw
Speaker 4: a brick at them, and then they blow up and
Speaker 4: kill a bunch of people, and then I'd go in
Speaker 4: and sweep up and take out everybody left. But a
Speaker 4: lot of times that meant I needed guns, I needed pipes,
Speaker 4: I needed weapons that I could use to kind of
Speaker 4: fight people, and it never really felt that great to do.
Speaker 4: So yeah, Bloodlines too. I think it's another case of
Speaker 4: this game was about as good as it could have
Speaker 4: wound up being. And I have a lot of sympathy
Speaker 4: for the people who worked on it for years and
Speaker 4: got laid off. I have a lot of people a
Speaker 4: lot sympathy for the people who had to pick up
Speaker 4: a project that had been in development for so long
Speaker 4: and see it across the finish line. But I think
Speaker 4: it wears a lot of its long development on its
Speaker 4: sleeve in that way, and I'm hopeful that it picks
Speaker 4: up a little bit more steam. I do think the
Speaker 4: way in which you could salvage itself for me would
Speaker 4: be if the story gets more interesting, if the characters
Speaker 4: get more I do find the characters very interesting. I
Speaker 4: think their vision of Seattle as a vampire town is
Speaker 4: very compelling. I think a lot of the characters that
Speaker 4: they've installed, there's a new princes, there's a fight for power,
Speaker 4: a clear divide between what the thin Bloods wants and
Speaker 4: them wanting to see Seattle as kind of a refuge
Speaker 4: city for thin bloods, where other cities will not acknowledge
Speaker 4: thin bloods or will oftentimes hunt them down and kill
Speaker 4: them because they see them as weaker vampires. And I
Speaker 4: find that tension very interesting. I find the politics of
Speaker 4: this game very interesting. But I think that's kind of
Speaker 4: going to have to be the saving grace because I
Speaker 4: don't know that the combat or anything like that is
Speaker 4: really going to do anything for me in this game.
Speaker 1: Mhmm, damn, that's a bummer.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you think else like what it see it through
Speaker 2: the credits.
Speaker 4: But I probably will. I probably will. I've seen a
Speaker 4: lot of Vampire games through just because I do like
Speaker 4: this world so much. I think if you're listening to
Speaker 4: this and any of that sounded appealing, maybe worth checking out.
Speaker 4: I mean, I will tell you that Vampire the Mass Grade,
Speaker 4: but Lens one is still one of my favorite games
Speaker 4: of all time. I was actually replaying it ahead of
Speaker 4: this game coming out. And it it stands the test
Speaker 4: of time. It's very, very good. And there was the
Speaker 4: I think fairly underrated Vampire the Mass Grade Swan Song
Speaker 4: that came out a while ago.
Speaker 1: Yeah or something.
Speaker 2: Yea Ryan really liked that one.
Speaker 4: He reviewed that it's a very I don't know that.
Speaker 4: I think it also has its own problems, but I
Speaker 4: think it was a very interesting take on the vampire
Speaker 4: world and did some really cool things in that realm,
Speaker 4: especially if you have often missed the sort of telltale
Speaker 4: style of games or that sort of adventure game set up.
Speaker 4: It does some really cool things in that respect. So, yeah,
Speaker 4: I've been sitting on that game. I have it on
Speaker 4: thick Steam or the Epic store.
Speaker 2: Cool. Yeah, that's a bummer. I was looking forward to
Speaker 2: playing as to someone that like, this is gonna be
Speaker 2: sort of like my gateway into Vampire to Mask Greade.
Speaker 2: Like I've never played the tabletop game or the original game.
Speaker 2: There was a point where and it might still happen.
Speaker 2: We even thought about playing the first game as like
Speaker 2: a super replay, which could still happen. It's eric gets
Speaker 2: you to do that, who knows, But yeah, I just
Speaker 2: I like the the things that people complain about with
Speaker 2: this game in terms of the action, it was like
Speaker 2: for me, as someone that I had no attachment to it,
Speaker 2: I was like, oh, it kind of looks like a
Speaker 2: little bit like dishonor. That's that seems cool. I like Dishonored.
Speaker 2: I don't know, that does sound like it's exactly accurate,
Speaker 2: especially like immersive SIMP stuff like I'm sure it's not that,
Speaker 2: but just like it tickled that part of my brain
Speaker 2: of like, maybe this will be for me as someone
Speaker 2: that is not precious to this, to this series, but
Speaker 2: here in the combat is not great. It's actually that's
Speaker 2: a really big bummer.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, I think this is not This is not
Speaker 4: a Dishonored Tier M sim. This is not a like
Speaker 4: you know, I'm trying to be vague here, But other
Speaker 4: stuff I have played so far this year has done
Speaker 4: more for me in sort of the realm of narrative
Speaker 4: choices and narrative decision making and character crafting that I think,
Speaker 4: I just don't know. It's it's it's kind of a bummer,
Speaker 4: but it is what is.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Well, taking a wild turn here from from bloodlines
Speaker 1: to different kind of blood line. The front Line Battlefield six,
Speaker 1: which I've been playing.
Speaker 2: Quite everyone related on the front line.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, it's like the family civil war situation. A
Speaker 1: lot of a lot of unbred stuff happening, you know,
Speaker 1: a lot of a lot of family family ties on
Speaker 1: the on the battlefield, you know, fighting your brother in arms. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, it goes, you know, it goes. I've been
Speaker 1: playing Battlefield six and really really enjoying it. If you're
Speaker 1: looking for single player impressions, I have none. Okay, you
Speaker 1: can skip this part of the video.
Speaker 2: That's like the main thing in this game, isn't that
Speaker 2: what the series is all about? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Yeah, everyone loves Battlefield. It's known for its single player campaigns.
Speaker 1: Nobody pays an interest to the multiplayer, so uh no.
Speaker 1: But if you're looking for single player impressions, go read
Speaker 1: our review written by Jake we saw. He did a
Speaker 1: great job talking about it. It sounded like it was
Speaker 1: kind of like, eh, yeah, not much stake in what's
Speaker 1: happening in that single player. But no, I've been playing
Speaker 1: the multiplayer. Uh and you know, I've kind of been
Speaker 1: been on the Battlefield beat a bit in the lead
Speaker 1: up in terms of you know, we went to several
Speaker 1: preview events that kind of thing, and you know, had
Speaker 1: a good look at what that what was on offer,
Speaker 1: you know, at launch ahead of time, and going into it.
Speaker 1: Really enjoyed what I saw on the preview builds and
Speaker 1: all that kind of stuff, and that that enjoyment has
Speaker 1: continued into the final release. I've really really enjoyed getting
Speaker 1: back into just the the loop of you know, grinding
Speaker 1: out levels on my character and getting new attachments on
Speaker 1: my weapons and really kind of customizing that getting into
Speaker 1: the settings. And I've been finding a lot of guides
Speaker 1: on TikTok of all places for like, I play a
Speaker 1: lot of sniper. I play sniper a lot in battlefield
Speaker 1: games specifically. I think it's called recon in this one,
Speaker 1: but typically with snipers and battlefield you really have to like,
Speaker 1: you know, take into account your bullet drop and all
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff and your fire rate, and that
Speaker 1: can be a challenge for some players. It's always a challenge.
Speaker 1: I've really liked figuring out in a battlefield game, you know,
Speaker 1: getting to know your scope and like the range on
Speaker 1: it and worry how far up you need to kind
Speaker 1: of like aim to hit your shots right. To think
Speaker 1: about bullet This.
Speaker 4: Is his way of saying that he misses a lot
Speaker 4: of his shots.
Speaker 1: Now this is my way of saying I broke the system.
Speaker 1: Well somebody else did h and I am Now I
Speaker 1: follow this TikTok guide where essentially, if you attach a
Speaker 1: range finder onto your sniper rifle, you can then go
Speaker 1: into your key bindings. And I was showing this eric
Speaker 1: this earlier, and you can set essentially you can set
Speaker 1: it number one. So when you press right click on
Speaker 1: your mouse, which is look down sites right looking into
Speaker 1: your scope, you can also have that be steady aim
Speaker 1: like hold your breath. And so by default, now when
Speaker 1: I click the right the right mouse button, not only
Speaker 1: am I zooming in, but my characters automatically holding his breath.
Speaker 1: So I've got the study is shot possible, which it's
Speaker 1: not a big deal. Normally you can just hit shift
Speaker 1: and you know you can do it yourself, but it's
Speaker 1: nice to kind of have it right when you ain't
Speaker 1: down your sites, it's ready. In the same way I
Speaker 1: have bound the rangefinder the zeroing like zero in your
Speaker 1: scope and your sniper, which essentially I've bound that to
Speaker 1: the left click. So the order of operations is when
Speaker 1: you right click you scope in, you're holding your breath,
Speaker 1: you left click. The order of operations is that it
Speaker 1: zero's your sniper first and then you shoot the bullet.
Speaker 1: And so I'm expecting this to be taken out of
Speaker 1: the game very soon because as it stands right now,
Speaker 1: you can pretty much be at any range and if
Speaker 1: you have your key mindset like this, if you have
Speaker 1: your weapon the radical pointed on a person, no matter
Speaker 1: how far away they are in the game, you will
Speaker 1: hit them. And boy is it fun. Just like real life.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, just like real life.
Speaker 2: You know remember when.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's.
Speaker 4: I think the Geneva devs worked on that one a
Speaker 4: little bit, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, getting triple quadruple kills with a sniper in your
Speaker 1: hand feels amazing. Uh and and and it feels like
Speaker 1: everybody has the tech to do it. It's not like
Speaker 1: a exploit, like anybody can go and do this. So
Speaker 1: it's fun. That makes it okay. It's definitely not going
Speaker 1: to stay in the game. I can almost assure you
Speaker 1: they're going.
Speaker 2: It wasnt you just called it out for everyone.
Speaker 1: Well I got it from a youth, Yeah that's me.
Speaker 4: But in general, going to catch the heat for it,
Speaker 4: not not the TikTok creators. Yeah, learn this lesson the
Speaker 4: hard way.
Speaker 1: It is what it is, you know. But I man,
Speaker 1: I'm really enjoying Battlefield. It's it's taken me back to
Speaker 1: battle Bit when Eric and I played that, when that
Speaker 1: just came out. Yeah, and battle Bit was just, you know,
Speaker 1: it was came out in a time where the Battlefield
Speaker 1: series was hurting, and you know, it just there's such
Speaker 1: a fun, sticky, unique feeling to Battlefield that other series
Speaker 1: just don't can't replicate or haven't, and battle Bit was
Speaker 1: the closest thing, and battle Bit did a great job.
Speaker 1: But to have the real thing with all the features
Speaker 1: and the polish and the backing of like seven studios
Speaker 1: behind it and a one Mega studio, which is problematic
Speaker 1: in other ways, but for the sake of getting a
Speaker 1: good Battlefield game, I think I think it has paid
Speaker 1: off for them. I'm really enjoying the maps. There are
Speaker 1: some levels I don't love, like I kind of prefer
Speaker 1: the bigger ones where you have all the vehicles in play,
Speaker 1: but there's a fair amount of modes that you can
Speaker 1: choose from, and each of them are, you know, pretty fun.
Speaker 1: I think the Escalation is the new mode where Jay
Speaker 1: called it out in our reviews and I think I
Speaker 1: might have talked about it in this show previously. But
Speaker 1: sort of like you know, you start with five or
Speaker 1: six points and you're slowly the map is slowly kind
Speaker 1: of closing out as like as the longer you hold
Speaker 1: like a zone, eventually it just becomes your territory, and
Speaker 1: so the amount of points on the map you're fighting
Speaker 1: over gets shorter and shorter and thus get more intense.
Speaker 1: Every area gets more intense because it's getting more focus.
Speaker 1: And that's a really fun way to play. But I mean,
Speaker 1: just getting in there and playing Breakthrough is really my
Speaker 1: preferred way to play, like attack and defend, and yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm you know, that's what I want to play tonight.
Speaker 1: I just want to get out of battlefield after work
Speaker 1: and grind some grind some attachments on my weapons, and
Speaker 1: you know, have fun with friends, get on some voice chat,
Speaker 1: and just get up to shenanigans.
Speaker 4: The shenanigans happen pretty fun. As someone who has been
Speaker 4: on that voice chat, I mean when we were playing
Speaker 4: the other day during our Cuff Bust stream, yeah it
Speaker 4: was I was reminded of what one of the greatest
Speaker 4: joys in gaming is which is the first time you
Speaker 4: boot up a battlefield, and it doesn't have to be
Speaker 4: your first time play battlefield just has to have been
Speaker 4: a while. But the first time you get in a
Speaker 4: helicopter and you have to attempt to fly the helicopter,
Speaker 4: I don't think I've laughed that hard in a long time.
Speaker 4: Our good friend Jesse Vittelli was flying the helicopter and
Speaker 4: I was on one of the side gunner positions, and
Speaker 4: at multiple points we were on solid ninety degree angles,
Speaker 4: wedged between buildings and flinging around and just all the
Speaker 4: alarms going off and then being like, don't worry, we're fine,
Speaker 4: we're fine, and the rotors chopped through fuselage and things
Speaker 4: like that. I love Battlefield when it's doing that. I
Speaker 4: think it's one of the funniest games that is not
Speaker 4: supposed to be funny out there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it.
Speaker 4: I think those games are incredible at player interaction when
Speaker 4: you get down to that, in the ways that silly
Speaker 4: player interactions can play out, and if anything, I wish
Speaker 4: they leaned into that more. I'm somebody who really loved
Speaker 4: I would play a battlefield too a lot. In Battlefield
Speaker 4: nineteen forty two, back when that came out, and I
Speaker 4: loved those games because they would often have those kind
Speaker 4: of strategic emplacements. But I would sneak to the back
Speaker 4: of the enemy lines and plant C four on their jets,
Speaker 4: and then I would wait, and then somebody would hop
Speaker 4: in the jet and start to take off, and I'd
Speaker 4: wait for them to just get off the runway like wheels,
Speaker 4: just starting the lift into the air, and then boop
Speaker 4: and watch it explode and be like got em. And
Speaker 4: then I'd wait for the next jet to respawn. I'd
Speaker 4: do it all over again. It was good stuff. I
Speaker 4: haven't really found ways to do that kind of chaos
Speaker 4: in Battlefield six yet, but it does just have some
Speaker 4: good chaos. I wish the maps were a little bit more.
Speaker 4: I don't know, individual that makes sense.
Speaker 1: Yeah, a lot of.
Speaker 4: The maps outside of the New York map, even the
Speaker 4: New York map at times feels a little samy because
Speaker 4: of the level destruction. At some point, all the buildings
Speaker 4: just start falling to pieces, and they kind of just
Speaker 4: maps start to feel very samey as they all turn
Speaker 4: to rubble, and I wish they had a little bit
Speaker 4: more personality to some of the points that you're holding.
Speaker 4: They tend to fall within kind of the usual suspects
Speaker 4: of what you would expect from that sort of stuff.
Speaker 4: I wish there was a little bit more dynamism in
Speaker 4: that regard. I think that's my only major critique of
Speaker 4: the multiplayer so far.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I would agree with you. I think that's my
Speaker 1: major critique as well, But it's not really necessarily hindering
Speaker 1: my enjoyment most of the time. It's it's something I
Speaker 1: would like to see them addressed in future map updates,
Speaker 1: like as they bring out new seasons and that kind
Speaker 1: of thing. With this game, I'd like to see some
Speaker 1: more personality in those maps for sure. If Wake Island
Speaker 1: ain't in that game right now, you know Wake Island
Speaker 1: is going to be in that game itself. Oh, there's
Speaker 1: there's no way they're not going to put a Wake
Speaker 1: Island in there. So yeah, but they need they would
Speaker 1: need boats.
Speaker 4: They do need boats boats.
Speaker 1: There are no boats in the game right now. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there are no boats, but I must Wake Yeah exactly,
Speaker 1: I need them to add that for sure. But I
Speaker 1: really want to see Yeah, you can absolutely nobody's ever
Speaker 1: crashed the boat boat.
Speaker 4: A boat has never crashed before. Yeah, there's no icebergs
Speaker 4: in this game, so we're fine.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I do. Oh, you had said something that triggered
Speaker 1: something in my brain.
Speaker 2: It's about boatsm Titanic.
Speaker 1: No, No, it was about battlefield. But that's okay.
Speaker 4: I don't know Wake Island boats. I have no boats,
Speaker 4: but I must Wake. Yeah, that was all good stuff.
Speaker 4: I don't know where I like that the Wake Island had.
Speaker 4: I think it was the nineteen forty two one had
Speaker 4: the aircraft carriers. So you did the aircraft carrier take
Speaker 4: off because people, yeah, so bad at aircraft carrier takeoffs,
Speaker 4: and it's it's hard, that's a short runway, and if
Speaker 4: you've got to refuel that thing, good luck. Like, honestly,
Speaker 4: you're just crashing the plane and respawning it at that.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I don't know anybody. I've never seen somebody
Speaker 1: actually the plane. Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think in modern battlefields you don't have any
Speaker 4: sort of need to refuel or restock or anything like that.
Speaker 4: I was driving one of the anti air tanks because
Speaker 4: I'm a nerd that likes to operate the anti air vehicles,
Speaker 4: the big radar dishes and stuff, and I was noticing.
Speaker 4: I was like, oh, normally I would be like I
Speaker 4: need to be an engineer so I can repair and
Speaker 4: restock and things like that, And I was like, Oh,
Speaker 4: I don't need to. It just kind of like auto restocks.
Speaker 1: There is a pass Yeah, there's a passive for engineers
Speaker 1: that if you're in vehicles automatically yeah. Yeah, but you
Speaker 1: don't have to worry about refueling. Yeah, which i'd like
Speaker 1: to see, you know them kind of tinker with that
Speaker 1: kind of McCain.
Speaker 4: Supply lines in battlefield, you know what I'm saying. Yeah,
Speaker 4: I do like running some tank shells to the front
Speaker 4: line to restock the abrams and all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: That'd be kind of fun. That sounds like the kind
Speaker 1: of shenanigans you get up to. And what is that game?
Speaker 1: Oh god, I played it for a little I played
Speaker 1: it for very little. Hell what loose? Oh yeah yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: they've got some of that kind of stuff in there
Speaker 1: a little bit.
Speaker 4: That's that's because it was old timey war. Now we've
Speaker 4: invented ways of not having.
Speaker 3: To do that.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: It's like when mass effect Mass Effect one came out
Speaker 4: and they're like, we just don't have clips anymore because
Speaker 4: we invented guns with infinite bullets.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly what we needed.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's we all needed that.
Speaker 4: Finally we wiped out bullet scarcity.
Speaker 1: But yeah, that's about all I got to say about Battlefield.
Speaker 1: I just want to be playing it. You know. It's
Speaker 1: it's it's scratching the itch. It's not doing anything wild.
Speaker 1: It's very straight forward, but it's it's hitting the spot.
Speaker 2: Seems like it's like a good back to basics almost
Speaker 2: from what I like.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I would say sat Battlefield kind of yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it kind of needed to be. H it feels it
Speaker 1: feels like a foundation for something bigger. Oh, I remember
Speaker 1: what I was gonna say. Uh, I'm very curious to
Speaker 1: see how Portal evolves, which is their UGC platform for
Speaker 1: people making maps and modes and yeah, that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: I would like to see what emerges from that. I've
Speaker 1: thought about tinkering that with my tinkering with that myself,
Speaker 1: because I messed with it in twenty forty two a bit,
Speaker 1: and I know they've kind of upgraded what you can
Speaker 1: do with it a fair amount. So I want to
Speaker 1: get in there and tinker with that and see what
Speaker 1: see what's what.
Speaker 4: I don't know that I would think of Battlefield as
Speaker 4: the kind of space that you would have incredible room
Speaker 4: for for verbiage to evolve in a in a UGC environment,
Speaker 4: Because when I think of UGC within a game like this,
Speaker 4: I think of Halo and how you really cool stuff
Speaker 4: came out of people being given the tools to just
Speaker 4: make whatever they wanted to in Halo. But I don't
Speaker 4: know that all of the mechanics of Battlefield would lend
Speaker 4: themselves well to that. But also, like I don't know,
Speaker 4: prove me wrong. I like, go out there and do
Speaker 4: something cool with it, even if it's just we made
Speaker 4: only up but you're playing as a bunch of random
Speaker 4: Army soldier.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, honestly, I would like to see just
Speaker 1: like maps, you know, user creative maps, see what comes
Speaker 1: out of that. But yeah, and I think right now
Speaker 1: it's mostly I've just seen modes. Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I don't know if there's an actual level editor. I
Speaker 1: think there is, you have to. I don't know how
Speaker 1: they've got it all working. It's kind of separate in
Speaker 1: a weird way, like you can log into the browser. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I know, it's edible maps, not edible maps, editable maps.
Speaker 1: I loved one custom logic, and like you can mess
Speaker 1: with the AI stuff too, So I want to dive
Speaker 1: in because I used to be big into Forge and
Speaker 1: I like at least dabbling with these things when they
Speaker 1: come out. But but yeah, I'm gonna toss it over
Speaker 1: to you, Marcus. You've been playing a game called by
Speaker 1: Sweet Carol? Is that right?
Speaker 2: Yep?
Speaker 1: I don't know anything about this game, so please enlighten me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this game caught my eye God, probably like a
Speaker 2: year ago with a trailer. To thing about this game
Speaker 2: if you've never heard of it is the art direction,
Speaker 2: which it's very evocative of classic Disney's or specifically like
Speaker 2: maybe like old animated movies, but like I think Disney
Speaker 2: is probably where your mind's gonna go, especially in particular
Speaker 2: like the work of Don Bluth, like his era of
Speaker 2: Disney and his films. It's not like a one to one,
Speaker 2: but it's like the closest comparison. And it's also like like,
Speaker 2: despite looking like a whimsical Disney movie, it's a bit
Speaker 2: of a horror game where you control a sort of
Speaker 2: almost like prototypical Disney princess esque character who is an
Speaker 2: orphan at this sort of like all Girls' School it's
Speaker 2: set in England in the early nineteen hundreds, and it's
Speaker 2: the school's called Bunny Hall, and it's this girl that's
Speaker 2: kind of like looking for her friend Carol. Like the
Speaker 2: girl's name is Lana, and her friend Carol has gone missing.
Speaker 2: She doesn't know why. They're like best friends, and everyone
Speaker 2: at the school is pretty horrible to Lana, Like there's
Speaker 2: like sort of like the mean girl group there that
Speaker 2: kind of bullies her all the time, and then her
Speaker 2: like I don't know if she's like the head mistress
Speaker 2: or one of her teachers is kind of mean to
Speaker 2: her too, and everyone's just kind of like out against
Speaker 2: her just for being like different and weird and not
Speaker 2: like a proper lady. So the game itself, it's it's
Speaker 2: basically an old school point and click adventure combined with
Speaker 2: like a little bit of a platformer, but it's got
Speaker 2: the like it's got the point and clicks kind of vibes,
Speaker 2: Like you're exploring these environments, you're picking up items you
Speaker 2: got like an inventory, and you're just trying to pretty
Speaker 2: much complete like a complicated order of operations to get
Speaker 2: out of like a of a room or to escape something.
Speaker 2: So there's there's like stealth involved. There's a bit of
Speaker 2: like hide and seek stuff where you're like hiding from
Speaker 2: characters and you have like like you can hold your
Speaker 2: breath kind of like an amnesia thing to make sure
Speaker 2: that uh, creatures don't find you. Like it's it's like
Speaker 2: a mix of a of a couple of different genres.
Speaker 2: And I think so far, like I'm on the fourth
Speaker 2: chapter right now, so like a few hours in. I'm
Speaker 2: enjoying it just because I love the presentation and I
Speaker 2: just like the like it's got like a soundtrack that's
Speaker 2: evocative of old Disney movies, like kind of like swelling,
Speaker 2: and it's like inspiring. But then you kind of get to
Speaker 2: the kind of more subversive stuff of like, oh, there's
Speaker 2: like a creepy owl here with like glowing red eyes,
Speaker 2: and oh, I'm being chased by like a a weird
Speaker 2: bunny creature that looks like it used to be a teacher.
Speaker 2: But it's like now this like horrifying rabbit that's chasing
Speaker 2: me with a giant like meat tender rising mallet, and
Speaker 2: I have to hide from it as I'm trying to
Speaker 2: solve a bunch of puzzles around this thing like it's
Speaker 2: it's pretty it's been pretty enjoyable, if not just a
Speaker 2: little like you know, like kind of buy the numbers
Speaker 2: like adventure game stuff. You know, you read like a diary.
Speaker 2: It's like, oh, okay, you need to find a key.
Speaker 2: Oh there's a lot dealer here, or here, I need
Speaker 2: to divert electricity to activate this machine to grind up
Speaker 2: some meat to then do this. Like it's like a
Speaker 2: lot of like you know, kind of seeing the solution
Speaker 2: and and working backwards in the way that a lot
Speaker 2: of adventure games are. I think my biggest problem with
Speaker 2: the game so far is that it's a bit janky,
Speaker 2: at least on PS five, which is where I'm playing it.
Speaker 2: It's on I think, like mostly everything I know. It's
Speaker 2: on BC and Xbox. It might be on Switch, I'm
Speaker 2: not sure, but there's a bit of a there's a
Speaker 2: hitchiness to some of the animations because you can like
Speaker 2: do some like light like I say, a lot of
Speaker 2: light platforming and jumping around and like climbing stuff, and
Speaker 2: there's a I don't know if it's something maybe with
Speaker 2: the animation or if it's like I don't know, but
Speaker 2: there's like a little bit of like a almost like
Speaker 2: a tech demo feel to some of the interactions, or
Speaker 2: it's like, ooh, it feels like this could have been
Speaker 2: a little bit more polished to make this a little
Speaker 2: less like a little less rough. Yeah, like and even
Speaker 2: some of the like voice acting and like the like
Speaker 2: the lip sync is is pretty off with certain characters
Speaker 2: like I. The other big thing that I unlocked recently
Speaker 2: is that you get the ability pretty early on to
Speaker 2: turn into a rabbit, so you could transform into a
Speaker 2: rabbit at will, and that opens up new gameplay where
Speaker 2: you're kind of the rabbits faster and you can kind
Speaker 2: of like crawl into areas that Lana has a grown
Speaker 2: or I guess like a regular sized person can't access.
Speaker 2: It could be good for running away from things. The
Speaker 2: rabbit smaller, but the rabbit's also more vulnerable can't take
Speaker 2: as many hits as as Lana. I also interacted with
Speaker 2: another character that you kind of switch between, who is
Speaker 2: a guy. He's like a weird looking like he's the
Speaker 2: way he's drawn, he almost looks like he comes from
Speaker 2: a different game because he has a little bit more
Speaker 2: of the like kind of like early kind of like
Speaker 2: tube animation look to him, like if you like think
Speaker 2: of Cuphead a little bit as a modern example, Like
Speaker 2: he's like the only thing in the game that kind
Speaker 2: of looks like him, and I'm wondering what that's all about.
Speaker 2: But there's like a segment where you're switching roll between
Speaker 2: Lana and this guy who you're controlling his head and
Speaker 2: nothing else because it's been separated from his body. This
Speaker 2: game's weird, guys. I don't know if that was evident.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of weird stuff in this game. But yeah,
Speaker 2: so far it's been it's been fine, Like it hasn't
Speaker 2: like blown me away once you kind of settle into
Speaker 2: sort of like the novelty of the presentation. But there
Speaker 2: is a story that is The story being told so
Speaker 2: far is interesting, Like it seems like there's like a
Speaker 2: bit of a like Lana brushing up against this alternate
Speaker 2: sort of like reality that has all these fantastical creatures
Speaker 2: are kind of bleeding into the sort of like mundane
Speaker 2: world that she occupies, and that she seems like there's
Speaker 2: season like she might have a bigger destiny than she's
Speaker 2: aware of, and she's trying to, like I said, just
Speaker 2: find her friend Carol. But it seems to be a
Speaker 2: conspiracy around her, like maybe some maybe the school staff
Speaker 2: maybe knows more than they're letting on. And there's and
Speaker 2: there's a lot of like the sort of like the
Speaker 2: rabbit motif that keeps appearing between like the bunny monster
Speaker 2: and the name of the school and Lana turning into
Speaker 2: a rabbit. It seems like there's something like a larger
Speaker 2: lore with like rabbits that they like where I stop,
Speaker 2: they kind of like open the door a little bit
Speaker 2: more on that. I'm kind of interesting to see where
Speaker 2: it goes.
Speaker 1: Cool. It certainly grabs me, like visually it's but I
Speaker 1: don't know, like the horror side of it seems.
Speaker 2: I will say the horror is okay. I say this
Speaker 2: as like I love horror. Somebody tolerance for horror is
Speaker 2: pretty high, Like I can, I can endure a lot
Speaker 2: of really scary stuff. This has been very mild, like
Speaker 2: very very mild. Like it's been more like ooh, like
Speaker 2: almost like Halloween spooky.
Speaker 1: This is a whimsical horror.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, you're like, oh, that owl looks a little creepy.
Speaker 4: What little I've seen of it kind of reminds me
Speaker 4: of clock Tower in that way. Like it gives me
Speaker 4: some clock Tower vibe, maybe not wholly in gameplay, but
Speaker 4: just in the sort of esthetic and vibe it's going
Speaker 4: for somewhere in the realm of like clock Tower meets
Speaker 4: Alice in Wonderland type vibes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like I could see that. Like it's there's like
Speaker 2: a few like mild jump scares here, and Narrator's only
Speaker 2: been one like jump scared that like really got me
Speaker 2: because it was so unexpected. But I think if you're
Speaker 2: like if you're in this game because you think it
Speaker 2: looks cool in the art direction and you like sort
Speaker 2: of like classic adventure styles, but the horror is the barrier.
Speaker 2: So far, at least from what I've played, I think
Speaker 2: it's been more than manageable, and I think sort of
Speaker 2: like there's like plenty of levity between the sort of
Speaker 2: like more overtly scary stuff that kind of bounces it
Speaker 2: out gives you a nice break from it. So yeah,
Speaker 2: I again, I can't speak for the rest of the game.
Speaker 2: Maybe it goes off the rails and becomes like terrifying
Speaker 2: later on, but I've actually been sort of surprised. I
Speaker 2: felt like a lot of the trailers were leading into
Speaker 2: the sort of the the thing of like, oh, it's
Speaker 2: like a Disney movie, but it's terrifying, and it's like
Speaker 2: it's not really so far.
Speaker 1: Yeah that's fair. Yeah, well cool. That was by Sweet
Speaker 1: Carol in case you missed it. And to round out
Speaker 1: the show, I'm gonna toss it over to Eric. I
Speaker 1: want to hear your your very very early impressions of
Speaker 1: Pokemon Legends Z to A. I've got my copy right here,
Speaker 1: which okay, I want to I'm gonna say something real quick.
Speaker 1: Number one, Nintendo, what are we doing with this box?
Speaker 2: Number paragraph? They did? They put it back on the front.
Speaker 4: There.
Speaker 1: Yes, there's a back of the box quote that says
Speaker 1: includes the Nintendo Switch game and Nintendo Switch To Edition
Speaker 1: Upgrade Upgrade Pack. Upgrade Pack also available separately. For details
Speaker 1: visit and then it's other languages, and then the support page.
Speaker 1: There's a QR code. Please the love of God. Just
Speaker 1: like you've already got so much text on the back,
Speaker 1: just add some more texts. Okay, Alex, the thing I'm
Speaker 1: curious about, can you turn it back around to the front.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure how I'm supposed to know that this
Speaker 1: is the Nintendo Switch To version of the video game,
Speaker 1: right what the red bar and the text underneath the
Speaker 1: logo and then the giant block of text at the
Speaker 1: bottom of of Oh don't worry, Oh okay, thank god.
Speaker 2: It Also, it's gonna be found the switch to section
Speaker 2: of whatever story you get it from.
Speaker 4: I'm only being a little facetious because I know that
Speaker 4: there's still going to be people that are like I
Speaker 4: accidentally bought the Nintendo Switch one version of those games.
Speaker 2: They get what they deserve.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but also I don't know, like Nintendo, you can
Speaker 1: leave the dumb people behind a little bit, okay.
Speaker 2: Like has never done that. They are like have you
Speaker 2: seen their games?
Speaker 1: Yeah, listen, let's let's raise the bar a little bit, Nintendo.
Speaker 1: You know, let's expect a little more from our players.
Speaker 1: And also, why is Pokemon the Pokemon Legends logo is
Speaker 1: blurry if you get close. That is not my camera.
Speaker 1: That is like there is just an inherent blur. It's
Speaker 1: a little like not It's way easier to see in
Speaker 1: person when you hold it up, like, you know, five
Speaker 1: six inches from your face. It looks like they took
Speaker 1: the logo and like upscaled it in photoshop. It doesn't
Speaker 1: it looks like a rastered image.
Speaker 2: It's a artistic choice. It's the blur for how fast
Speaker 2: you're going to be open to camera.
Speaker 1: Showed it off.
Speaker 4: You can tell even here that it's like not quite
Speaker 4: as sharp as you would expect that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what's going on? Man? It feels like I'm curious,
Speaker 1: we're gonna find it.
Speaker 2: I hope that's not I hope that's not an omen
Speaker 2: for like the graphical fidelity.
Speaker 1: Hold on, let me see, is there like a clean
Speaker 1: version on the back.
Speaker 2: Ax, he's taking the oh Alex for audio listeners. Alex
Speaker 2: just took the box art out of the box, and
Speaker 2: I guess the inner art is a math. That's cool.
Speaker 1: Well, I was hoping the switch to cartridge. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: was hoping there was like a clean version of this
Speaker 1: without all the dumb text on the front cover.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's what it was.
Speaker 4: E ten plus. Does the the fantasy violence really put
Speaker 4: it over?
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 2: Someone dies this?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 4: They gave they gave Pikachu a gun. It's crazy. Isn't
Speaker 4: shoot it? But he does wield it?
Speaker 1: Agree? I mean the end of Scarby is kind of dark,
Speaker 1: you know, like, yeah, maybe they're maybe they're ratching it
Speaker 1: up in this one, But yeah, I'm just kind of
Speaker 1: disappointed and in the production quality of the physical version
Speaker 1: of this thing.
Speaker 4: This is probably like the thing that I say that
Speaker 4: gets me the most heat, So I'll just say it.
Speaker 4: I've been a digital buyer of games for a while now,
Speaker 4: and so that doesn't really bother me because I just
Speaker 4: know I did this thing last night at like eleven
Speaker 4: and it was golden.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's fair. I go back and forth for the
Speaker 1: Pokemon games. I like to get them physical, and I
Speaker 1: only do it for Nintendo. I don't all everything else
Speaker 1: is digital, Yeah, but I try to get their first. Yeah.
Speaker 4: A lot of the Switch games I have are the
Speaker 4: ones that were like very low print, so like I
Speaker 4: have like House and Fota Morgana and things like that,
Speaker 4: like very date, they weren't going to have a big
Speaker 4: run anyways, Pokemon Legends.
Speaker 1: Tell me, tell me what this game is like that
Speaker 1: I haven't played yet.
Speaker 4: So we we will have coverage coming of this in
Speaker 4: a more robust format.
Speaker 1: Brian.
Speaker 4: She is currently locked in the review chamber with with
Speaker 4: no sunlight or no very.
Speaker 2: We said we're not letting him out until he catches.
Speaker 4: Them all exactly exactly. He's he's going to catch them
Speaker 4: all or he's going to stay in there trying.
Speaker 1: No.
Speaker 4: So he's working on that for us. I did boot
Speaker 4: this up last night and play about say, like an
Speaker 4: hour hour and a half of zaw my early takeaways.
Speaker 4: I feel like I got a sense of this when
Speaker 4: I was you know, we did the NGT a while ago,
Speaker 4: and then we also there have been previews and stuff
Speaker 4: like that. It is really interesting the way that they
Speaker 4: have kind of reinvented Pokemon combat in this game, because
Speaker 4: I think I had noticed before that it seemed a
Speaker 4: little bit different than what you would normally expect from Pokemon,
Speaker 4: while still maintaining a lot of the core tenants of
Speaker 4: what Pokemon combat is. But then when I was actually
Speaker 4: playing it, I thought it was a little bit interesting
Speaker 4: the way it played out. Basically, you are running around
Speaker 4: on the map and I'm not outside of what looks
Speaker 4: like the mega fights where you're dodge rolling around big
Speaker 4: attacks and things like that. I'm not really sure what
Speaker 4: the idea is behind letting you just do the Dark
Speaker 4: Souls dodge roll all the time, but you can. But
Speaker 4: the more interesting thing is that you kind of issue
Speaker 4: these commands to your Pokemon to use different moves, and
Speaker 4: those moves have individual cool downtimers that were I mean
Speaker 4: a lot of Zeno blade uh. And so there is
Speaker 4: I what I what I think I like about it
Speaker 4: is that encourages you to use those status moves a
Speaker 4: little bit more because it means that you're kind of
Speaker 4: getting this interesting DPS rotation in that feels almost mmoi
Speaker 4: compared to say Pokemon, where you're kind of going my turn,
Speaker 4: your turn, my turn, your turn. Now there's a little
Speaker 4: bit more incentive to say, well, I'm going to use
Speaker 4: tail or a leer and then I'm going to follow
Speaker 4: it up with some attacks and and I'm kind of
Speaker 4: doing things on cool downs, and it incentivizes that play
Speaker 4: style a little bit more. Also makes battles a little
Speaker 4: bit faster, I feel, because you do, I mean, things
Speaker 4: died faster. You know, Pokemon are kind of out in
Speaker 4: the open world. It's a little bit easier to just
Speaker 4: kind of like beef with them real quick and then
Speaker 4: and yeah, settle it.
Speaker 1: I'm curious on that on that front. And Scarby, there
Speaker 1: was that ability where you kind of throw your Pokemon
Speaker 1: out they would just go fight stuff. The fast battle.
Speaker 4: Yeah, is that in this game no, well kind if so.
Speaker 4: The way it works now is you basically just have
Speaker 4: a Pokemon out like you.
Speaker 1: Have your your Did you play Arsius at all? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Is it similar to that?
Speaker 4: It's pretty similar to Arsius in that way. There's also
Speaker 4: kind of the free range Pokemon catching where you throw
Speaker 4: the ball and you can kind of aim it and
Speaker 4: things like that and sneak up on them with crouch
Speaker 4: attacks to get you know, stealth captures and things like that.
Speaker 4: A lot of that has returned from Arsius. I think
Speaker 4: that has really surprised me. I do think the world
Speaker 4: of Lumios is delightful.
Speaker 1: I love it.
Speaker 4: I was actually it's really embarrassing of me. I was
Speaker 4: taking a lot of screenshots of the hotel that you
Speaker 4: go to stay in, because you go into this hotel
Speaker 4: and there's just all these different chairs laid out with
Speaker 4: a rug and some coffee tables and stuff like that.
Speaker 4: I've been kind of in that zone because I've been
Speaker 4: I just moved to a new apartment and I've been
Speaker 4: kind of decorating and things like that. But I was
Speaker 4: really kind of taken aback by how the Pokemon Company
Speaker 4: and game free game Freaks specifically are really good at
Speaker 4: just creating these lived in environments that feel like they're natural,
Speaker 4: like people exist there.
Speaker 1: You know. You go into the.
Speaker 4: Hotel room and there's a little station where the cookies
Speaker 4: and the water are that you kind of get whenever
Speaker 4: you go to a hotel, and there's there's a night
Speaker 4: stand that has a lamp and a phone next to it,
Speaker 4: and a little outlet for people to plug in their
Speaker 4: charging stuff, and there's kind of the little luggage racks
Speaker 4: set out for you that your character puts their travel
Speaker 4: bag on. And I know it's a really weird thing
Speaker 4: to hone in on, but it played out. The more
Speaker 4: I played this game, the more I was like, there's
Speaker 4: a lot of just little touches throughout each area in
Speaker 4: Lumios that makes it feel very you know, vibrant. As
Speaker 4: as a landscape, I was worried that going to a
Speaker 4: city would make every block kind of feel the same.
Speaker 4: Yah you just have building by building by building, and
Speaker 4: instead there's definitely a lot of storefronts and buildings that
Speaker 4: just kind of exists as blocked in resting when you're
Speaker 4: in the wild areas and things like that. But even
Speaker 4: within there, you'll go buy a stall and somebody selling
Speaker 4: some goods or something, and they'll kind of have it
Speaker 4: laid out and it'll look like somebody actually like went
Speaker 4: to a city and set up their stall, just like
Speaker 4: you would see if you were in name a major
Speaker 4: metropolitan area.
Speaker 1: So it's.
Speaker 4: I find that really surprisingly appealing out of all this.
Speaker 4: The fashion, from what I've seen, is very very good
Speaker 4: for people who like character customization. I think Pokemon when
Speaker 4: they do that, they do that very well, and that's
Speaker 4: really fun to see. And so far, Like I mean,
Speaker 4: I'm not even close to being able to comment on
Speaker 4: a story or anything like that, but I do like
Speaker 4: the general setup of Lumios is kind of having these
Speaker 4: nightly battle royales where people are competing in the streets
Speaker 4: for points to become the best trainer in the city
Speaker 4: and stuff like that. I said this on Blue Sky,
Speaker 4: but I was like, you know, maybe having a walkable
Speaker 4: city where everybody at night challenges each other and my
Speaker 4: latest hyperfixation would fix me.
Speaker 1: I at that moment.
Speaker 4: Where I was like, it'd be pretty sick if I
Speaker 4: lived in it. I live in a fairly walkable city now,
Speaker 4: but like, if I lived in a walkable city and
Speaker 4: then at night everybody just went out into the streets
Speaker 4: and started, you know, doing magic the gathering Commander duels.
Speaker 1: That'd be kind of sick. I'd be pretty into that.
Speaker 1: You should play the Pokemon Trading card game on game
Speaker 1: Boy Color.
Speaker 4: It's hey, look, that's that's an all time goat right there.
Speaker 1: That's that's the best. I think that's like the most
Speaker 1: slept on Pokemon game in my opinion. Absolutely.
Speaker 2: I know the Legends series is different than like the
Speaker 2: I guess, the mainline Pokemon games, But are are you
Speaker 2: still picking like a starter, like who is your first Pokemon?
Speaker 1: I went with Tepig. My my options were Tepeig, todad Isle,
Speaker 1: and Chickorita. I don't particularly love any of those options,
Speaker 1: if I'm being honest with you.
Speaker 2: It's way Why are two of them from the same
Speaker 2: Jen and then tepegs from like the later Jens.
Speaker 4: That's weird, I think, if I remember right, the Fire
Speaker 4: Pokemon of that one was that's the last and Sinda
Speaker 4: Quill was in RCS as the fire option, So oh.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. I will say Tota Dial is one of
Speaker 1: my favorite characters in Pokemon, and so I will be
Speaker 1: picking him. But I do want to say people hate
Speaker 1: on Tepig and like his evolution line like m bore
Speaker 1: and all that. I I'm a Tepic defender.
Speaker 2: I just want to say I think he's cute. I
Speaker 2: don't know, I've never played his games, but he's like
Speaker 2: a cool fire pig.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, I didn't.
Speaker 4: I didn't play his original gen, but I picked Tepig
Speaker 4: just because I was like, I don't really love Tota Dial,
Speaker 4: I don't love Chickorita. So because I went with Sindquill
Speaker 4: in that gen.
Speaker 1: So did I.
Speaker 4: It's like I'll just I'll just It's like I'll just
Speaker 4: go fire on this one. I tend to like the
Speaker 4: fire starters a fair bit and Tepig. You want another
Speaker 4: thing that this game nails is the animations, just little
Speaker 4: little animation. So you picked Tepig and you have your
Speaker 4: first battle on then Tepics like yeah and walks up
Speaker 4: to you and you put your fist out to fist
Speaker 4: bump it and it does like a little hop and
Speaker 4: spin and like slaps your fist with its tail, and
Speaker 4: then it's like ha ha, and I'm like yeah.
Speaker 1: Man, right or die?
Speaker 4: And so yeah, I think they nail that. One thing
Speaker 4: that I will just say almost immediately apparent, and probably
Speaker 4: what the largest complaint of this game is going to
Speaker 4: end up being no voice acting is that the game
Speaker 4: voice acting. No, but it's it's really become a problem
Speaker 4: at this point, Like I can't sugarcoat it anymore. There
Speaker 4: are entire cut scenes where people are talking, having conversations
Speaker 4: like we are right now, and they're just mouthing. They're
Speaker 4: just like pantomiming to like their subtitles at the bottom.
Speaker 2: Okay, so I do like the like, oh, okay.
Speaker 4: This is this is going to be bad audio for
Speaker 4: people listening on the podcast. But they're basically like yeah,
Speaker 4: it talking with their hands. It's yeah, and talking with
Speaker 4: their hands. I'm exaggerating that, Like they're kind of just
Speaker 4: saying things and then like like mouth movements and then
Speaker 4: there's subtitles at the bottom.
Speaker 2: I'm why. The first thing that came to mind was
Speaker 2: the NP season Sonic six talking with the.
Speaker 4: Yeah yeah, and it really there are a lot of
Speaker 4: big not even big story moments, but like things happening
Speaker 4: and characters getting involved where I even had moments where
Speaker 4: it felt unclear who was talking in a cutscene because
Speaker 4: of the fact that there was no voice acting.
Speaker 1: Because I imagine it came like it does.
Speaker 4: But in one specific cut scene, very the first one
Speaker 4: that you see, there's kind of three characters in a group,
Speaker 4: and it feels undetermined which one is specifically talking at
Speaker 4: which time, And I was kind of going, like, I know,
Speaker 4: I'm not supposed to be following everything that's happening right now,
Speaker 4: but this feels like intentionally unintentionally ambiguous, and that's I
Speaker 4: don't know, that's it just feels like my thought on
Speaker 4: it is, if you're not going to have voice acting,
Speaker 4: then don't do the cut scenes. Just have it all
Speaker 4: be text boxes that you thumb through, because then at
Speaker 4: least it's like, okay, well you still have textboxes that
Speaker 4: have characters' names on them and you can kind of follow,
Speaker 4: like who is talking, right, But if you're gonna have
Speaker 4: cut scenes, I mean, the most annoying one, the one
Speaker 4: that always gets brought up, is in Sword Shield, there
Speaker 4: was a fight that happens in kind of a rock
Speaker 4: venue where someone is literally playing music and singing a
Speaker 4: song and is just headbanging and singing into a mic.
Speaker 4: But there's no noise whatsoever. It's just like the same
Speaker 4: background music is playing. It has not changed whatsoever. It's
Speaker 4: and it's not like reflecting. There's not somebody singing. It's
Speaker 4: just someone pantomiming, and it's like very strange.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it kind of feels like like there's plenty of
Speaker 2: games where there's no dialogue and it's supposed to be text,
Speaker 2: but I feel like they're, like I said, they're shot
Speaker 2: in a way where you're like, oh, I'm not supposed
Speaker 2: to hear this, but like what you're describing sounds like
Speaker 2: it almost feels like, oh, there was going to be
Speaker 2: voice acting, but we ran at a time, so we
Speaker 2: just there.
Speaker 4: There's plenty of RPGs that straddle the line of they
Speaker 4: say like, okay, well Final Fantasy fourteen, does this, Trails
Speaker 4: in the Sky it just came out this year. Does
Speaker 4: this where there's not going to be text. There's going
Speaker 4: to be text in a lot of scenes, but it's
Speaker 4: not always going to be voiced. It's only going to
Speaker 4: be voiced for the big kick scenes, for the big moments, right,
Speaker 4: that would work fine. It's really weird that Pokemon is
Speaker 4: doing even more of these cut scenes and even more
Speaker 4: of these big moments it is not voice acting them.
Speaker 1: It's weird. It's just weird, and.
Speaker 4: I think that is annoyingly one of the biggest knocks
Speaker 4: already of this game against it, and I think will
Speaker 4: continue to be as I get deeper into the game.
Speaker 4: But otherwise, like I a while back, I might have
Speaker 4: talked about this on the podcast, actually, but Pokemon Legends,
Speaker 4: Arsius is the reason that I care about Pokemon again.
Speaker 4: It's straight up like I had fallen completely off the
Speaker 4: Pokemon train. Wasn't really into Sword Shield. Like I thought
Speaker 4: it was fun, but I didn't think it was amazing
Speaker 4: and it didn't reignite my love that I had when
Speaker 4: I was in Red, Blue and Gold Silver Days. But
Speaker 4: Arcius was like the breath of fresh air that I
Speaker 4: wanted from that series, and za z through a feels
Speaker 4: like it is doing the same thing where I'm just like,
Speaker 4: this feels fun, this feels new, this feels interesting. This
Speaker 4: is a side of Pokemon that I've always wanted them
Speaker 4: to explore. I love the concept of what is a
Speaker 4: city like when Pokemon live in it, when they're part
Speaker 4: of that world, and what are the tensions that arise
Speaker 4: from it? Like Detective Pikachu kind of touches on this too,
Speaker 4: But the idea of a different angle of Pokemon life
Speaker 4: and the sort of battle royale thing. God, I love
Speaker 4: a tournament arc like it's it's hitting a lot of
Speaker 4: big buttons for me in terms of this is the
Speaker 4: sort of story that it feels like refreshing and new
Speaker 4: and different and intriguing and fun and and so in
Speaker 4: that way, it's like cool game freak still has the sauce,
Speaker 4: still has the juice when they need it, but there's
Speaker 4: still a few things that feel like they're holding Pokemon
Speaker 4: back from hitting those like Breath of the Wild, notes
Speaker 4: of like this is becoming this giant, like defining piece
Speaker 4: of this series. Instead, it's like, we got a really
Speaker 4: good Pokemon entry, and I'm happy to have a really
Speaker 4: good Pokemon in tree that can be excited about because
Speaker 4: I liked a lot of aspects of Scarva, but it
Speaker 4: had a lot of hang ups. It had a lot
Speaker 4: of problems with it too, and I like that I'm
Speaker 4: I get to be a little bit less hung up
Speaker 4: on the problems here. But there are still a few
Speaker 4: like asterisks with zaw So. But that being said, I'm
Speaker 4: really enjoying my time with it. I can already tell
Speaker 4: like this is the game that I've wanted on my
Speaker 4: switch to for a while, Bonanza didn't hit as hard
Speaker 4: as I wanted it to. Mario Kart World is Mario
Speaker 4: Kart World, you know. I was never going to sit
Speaker 4: there and play like sixty hours of Mario Kart World.
Speaker 4: I was just going to raise friends that be that.
Speaker 4: But this is the game that I think I've been
Speaker 4: waiting for on my switch too, much like Arcius was
Speaker 4: that game for me on the Switch one, and I'm
Speaker 4: very excited to play more of it. When van Aken
Speaker 4: is out there in the battlefields of real war doing
Speaker 4: crazy stuff with his whole breath, drop shot crap, I'm
Speaker 4: going to be out in the streets of Lumios beating
Speaker 4: up kids pidgies for points.
Speaker 1: Maybe I'll maybe I'll join you. Yeah, I know.
Speaker 4: There's multiplayer. Okay, so the multiplayer is kind of crazy.
Speaker 4: I was joking, jokingly calling it Pokemon does Commander because
Speaker 4: it's essentially four players in a battle arena, all bring
Speaker 4: their Pokemon out and ring their teams with them and
Speaker 4: then fight for knockout points and take down points and
Speaker 4: things like that. So you can do kind of a
Speaker 4: weird like it's for player, free for all, so you
Speaker 4: can build alliances and then break them and stuff like that,
Speaker 4: and you're doing kind of fun stuff with that. I
Speaker 4: have not played it yet myself, but I'm very excited
Speaker 4: to do that because I think that's a really fun,
Speaker 4: interesting way to reimagine the Pokemon multiplayer space. I think
Speaker 4: in that way, they announced Pokemon Champions a while back
Speaker 4: as kind of the this is our competitive thing. If
Speaker 4: you want to do turn based competitive Pokemon, go play
Speaker 4: Pokemon Champions. I like that this might free them up
Speaker 4: to do some weirder things with Pokemon multiplayer moving.
Speaker 2: Forward, call the last I guess big thing is this
Speaker 2: game running all right on switch too?
Speaker 1: Yes?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I was playing it handheld last night kick stand
Speaker 4: it out because I just didn't want to hook up
Speaker 4: my dock to anything, and it ran super well. Maybe
Speaker 4: like a few random moments of like oh, going into
Speaker 4: a new area and it was like oh, okay, okay,
Speaker 4: we're good, and that was it. Otherwise it ran really
Speaker 4: really well. I was really happy with it. I haven't
Speaker 4: tried doc yet, so we'll see how that pans out.
Speaker 4: But definitely, I think the biggest thing I remember from
Speaker 4: games even like Arcus, where you would see a Pokemon
Speaker 4: off in the distance and it would kind of look
Speaker 4: like a slideshow. I have not had any of those
Speaker 4: moments yet in in z through Ray, and that's been
Speaker 4: very reaffirming. This is also on normal switch right, No,
Speaker 4: I'm playing on switch to. To clarify, I am playing
Speaker 4: on switch to.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was like, I don't know if we heard
Speaker 2: anything yet about how to switch one version.
Speaker 1: Go via condos on that one go with us, my friend.
Speaker 1: I mean, I've been.
Speaker 2: Very curious about just the I'm not like into Pokemon.
Speaker 4: Can you can you pull out the box again and
Speaker 4: check to make sure that there is a Nintendo switch
Speaker 4: to version. I wasn't clear on the box.
Speaker 1: Also, while I was looking, I also realized the top
Speaker 1: it's one screenshot, but like different cremes, it's all the same.
Speaker 1: They're they're like trying to show an animation playout.
Speaker 4: I think they tried to put a gift on the
Speaker 4: back of the box.
Speaker 2: They could they could have had five different photos off
Speaker 2: the game.
Speaker 1: No, no, no, no, we got a gift. We also
Speaker 1: let's cover up the entire Oh my god. Yeah, this
Speaker 1: is bad product design. I'm just gonna we should.
Speaker 2: Start reviewing box arts. We just started like accounting that
Speaker 2: into our review scores is how good the box art is.
Speaker 4: I still don't understand the giant red bar across the
Speaker 4: top of the box art that just says didn't to
Speaker 4: know switch to. That's I think maybe the most danding
Speaker 4: thing for me that I because because for a while
Speaker 4: I thought that was part of the actual box and
Speaker 4: it was just built into it. But no, that's just
Speaker 4: something they're putting on all the box arts for switch to.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, gotta let them know it's easy.
Speaker 4: Yeah, they're really concerned about people buying the wrong edition.
Speaker 1: I guess. I guess. So well, that's gonna be it
Speaker 1: for the show this week, everybody. Thank you for tuning in.
Speaker 1: Of course, head over to Gaminformer dot com slash subscribe
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Speaker 1: I've been Alex, that's been Eric and Marcus be sure
Speaker 1: to follow them. You can follow Eric at C Mousey
Speaker 1: se a m O O S. I follow Marcus Stewart
Speaker 1: at Marcus Stewart seven, so that's a right, Marcus cool.
Speaker 1: And you can follow me at its Van Aiken. That'll
Speaker 1: do it for the show this week. Thanks everybody, goodbye,