Speaker 1: Hey, everybody. Welcome to the Game and Former Show, a
weekly podcast covering the video game industry. Join us each
and every week for a discussion with the latest gaming news, reviews,
and exclusive reveals with Game and Former staff and special
guests from around the industry. I am your host, Marcus Stewart.
I am joined by Eric Van Allen.
Speaker 2: Hello.
Speaker 1: Hi, Completely normal intro time. One hundred percent normal intro time.
And when I think of normal intro times, you would
not believe the number of times I've had to on
the spot come up with weird intros for Charles Hart's
based on previous statements, and this is the latest one,
because Charles Art is the Gang of completely normal intros.
Speaker 3: Wow, okay, yes, Hello, my name is Charles Hart.
Speaker 1: Nice to meet you.
Speaker 3: Here's my business card.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you can tell this is definitely the first
time that we've recorded this intro. This is our first take. Yeah. Yeah,
they start calling to stephen A. Smith because we're the
King of first Takes. It is the show, right first.
Speaker 3: I like how you couldn't even say the phrase king
of first takes in one smooth sentence as opposed to me,
who is normal and professional all the time.
Speaker 1: Yes, got the real Brian Gumble voice performance going on
there and I like it. Hey, everybody, this week we're
gonna be talking about a few games. We got a
brand new game that came out this week called Big Hops.
If you followed the game the former YouTube channel, you
want have seen our new game play today video with
Charles Hart and Eric Van Allen playing through it. But
we're gonna have Charles give us the rundown.
Speaker 3: Changeable.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm sorry, Alex van Aiken, I got I did
the thing, I got the vans.
Speaker 2: It was gonna happen sooner early. Everyone on staff has
done it at least once. It's fine.
Speaker 1: You were saying you were rejecting the idea of Big
Hops from like a conceptual level.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, Hops should not be that big there.
The Hops are too big in that game. I can't
play him.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you're like, you're like Judy Hops size nice and small? No, no,
taller than her, that's what you've always said.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I definitely said.
Speaker 3: Eric will stop talking about Judy Hops. He always brings
her up when we're talking to the platforms, and it's.
Speaker 1: Like how she's the appropriate height and upsetting she was taller.
Speaker 3: I mean, I'm gonna I'm gonna veto this whole, this
whole side, this whole side train of thought.
Speaker 1: We just gotta go.
Speaker 2: Started the intro of this podcast saying it was too
much and we needed to do a different.
Speaker 1: We immediately came back to Judy hop.
Speaker 3: Uh, you can subscribe to game former dot com before
we start comps.
Speaker 1: I subscribe. We have magazines.
Speaker 3: Marcus is crying, so I'm trying to help.
Speaker 2: We have to jump in now. Yeah, yeah, we do
have magazines. World of Warcraft Midnight. Our latest cover is
out there.
Speaker 3: Look at that.
Speaker 2: It's gorgeous. Charles is holding it up. Mine is in
the other room. I was putting it in a magazine
protector because I got a very nice gift of magazine
protectors for Christmas. Look at that twenty one years of
World of Warcraft. Can you believe it?
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's exactly Givenformer dot com slash subscribe. If you
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magazine subscriptions a great way to help us out. But yes,
as I was saying before I killed myself with my
own dumb joke, we're gonna be talking about big Ops.
We're gonna be talking about Middle Gear, Solid Delta, We're
gonna be talking about Dragon Age to Veilguard, and also
Fire and Bloom Path of Radiance. As we're kind of
in sort of a a bit of a dead month
for January, we're still kind of using the month as
a chance to kind of go back and and revisit
some stuff, maybe play some older games for the first
time or finishing up at least in my case, some
of my Lingering twenty twenty five games. And then we're
gonna take a quick break and when we come back,
we're gonna talk about something I don't think we've we've
ever really dived into on the show that I can recall.
It's the state of subscription services in video games. So
we're talking about your Xbox Game Pass, your PlayStation networks,
you're a Nintendo switch on lines, maybe even your Apple Arcades.
We're gonna be kind kind of like the start of
this year, kind of took a good look at the
current land and kind of talk about whether or not,
you know, if we find whatever services that were subscribed
to still worth the money, kind of talk about maybe
how the prices have changed over the years, and by change,
I mean risen in the last year, yeah or so,
and whether or not they still command the same value
as they did maybe when they started, and maybe even
a bit about like, you know, like how are they
going to grow and change throughout twenty twenty six and
sort of beyond, where do we see these services going
and whether or not more or less people adopt them
over time. So stay tuned for that in the back
half at the show. But yes, as we alluded to,
completely normally big hops new three D platformer out this
week by a small developer named a lot big luckshot
luckshot games, luck shot games where you control a frog.
It's our first froggy game of twenty twenty, and it's
got a lot of like kind of three D Mario
meets a bit of Breath at a Wild to it,
where you're just Frog exploring this big and really like
vibrant and just sort of cheery three world. But Charles,
you've been playing this, tell us all about big Hops.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I've been playing a good bit. I'm like five
hours in the game from my I think from what
I've seen from the in game dialogue and then alsobscription,
there's like three big main areas, and I just beat
one of those big main areas.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 3: You play as Hop and he's a little frog guy
and he basically gets like teleported into another dimension and
he's trying to go home. In order to go home,
he needs these airship parts so he can, I guess,
fly back home. And Yeah, the actual gameplay is you
got a three D platformer, You've got a bunch of
like movement techniques, and one of the things I was
talking about in the new gameplay today, but just is
one of my favorite things about it is there's often
an intended path for you to get from point A
to point B. It might be just through like wall
running and jumping and diving and doing all your movement
tech you have. There's also these veggies that you can
throw that all have different like platforming helps. So one
of them just like spawns ropes that you can like
tight rope walk on. One of them bounces back and
you can like use your tongue to grapple to it
and bounce forward. There's a bunch of stuff like that.
We like about the game is that it's kind of
designed where it's like it's okay if you break us,
Like it's okay if you break the game with this move.
All that it knows is that you can get to
this point at some point, but there's never like quote
unquote breaking the game in that regard isn't actually like
ruining the fun at all. And they're kind of like
embracing the very like systems based exploration. So it's a
game that's like begging to be speed ram like. It's
one of those things that you'll see the techniques when
it comes out eventually, and it's gonna look crazier. You're
gonna be like, why are they obsessed with this veggie
I never used in the game. Oh wait, you can
use it for absolutely bonkers things. And yeah, it's voice
acted pretty well. It's very cute. As I've played, I've
gotten like a little bit more glitches, Like it's it's
a little unpolished. It's been development for like six years
or so, but there's still just some things here and there.
I had it crash one time. I had one area
where there was like one of those uh you know
in video games how there's a pole sticking out of
the wall and you can jump towards it and then
swing around it one hundred or three hundred and sixty
degrees the Prince of Persia. Yeah, a very very classic
video item. I was just a thing just now. I
was like, huh, that's very video gaming. I've never seen
someone do that in real life. I mean I've seen
it at like the Olympics, but not like, you know, yeah, yeah,
is this a Florida thing?
Speaker 1: Oh? I mean, have you seen our tiktoks with that? Surprising?
Speaker 3: If I told you it was GTA six is gonna
have poles sticking out of walls anyways? But yeah, I
know I had one where though, so one of those
wouldn't let me grab onto it, and it was like
just like little things like that. It hasn't been anything
absolutely game breaking. There's some like visual stuttering here and there,
but it's really good. It's very pleasant and chill and
laid back, and it's a nice like start to the
year of just being like I just want something new,
and it's been a while since I personally have played
like I think it's been since Astrobot that I've really
just like suck my teeth into a good three D platformer.
And yeah, it's nice and good. That's my review. I
haven't reviewed it, but you know, yeah, it looks cool.
Speaker 1: I think I'm with you where it's like I think
Astronaut was the last big three D platform and I
really really dive into and even looking at the Steam page,
they actually display in sort of the video preview like
some of the stats where it are kind of boasting
this is like a fifteen hour main game, but it
could take you over thirty hours one hundred percent, which
that's a lot bigger than I thought this game was.
Looking at it, I honestly thought it was something like
a I don't know like a not quite a short hike,
like an hour, but like five hours tops. It's sort
of what my brain assumed about this game. So it's
actually pretty cool that it's it's as big as it seemingly.
It's like a hundred over one hundred characters that are
all fully voiced. Even just watching the like kind of
the archived stream of the developer playing it, like, there's
a lot of cool stuff. I'm just just washing of, like, oh,
using your tongue to do a bunch of things, or
like there's like a point where like Hops throws like
a balloon on a ship to help it rise out
of the sea, which gave me like metal gear full
recovery vibes.
Speaker 3: That's that's the exact spot in the game.
Speaker 2: I was stuck on.
Speaker 1: Oh did I just.
Speaker 3: Literally the last time I played the game, it was like,
help help lift the ship out of the water, and
I was like, I don't freaking know how to do that.
On an unrelated note, I found these fun new balloon
veggies and I haven't really used them for anything.
Speaker 1: I didn't. I didn't.
Speaker 3: It's not like I was I was like stuck, stuck,
like you know, I could have I probably could have
solved whatever I wanted to yet now. Yeah, but yeah,
that's cool, that's.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: There's also like, uh, there's little uh purple collectibles. I
think they're called dark Bits. But as you get them
over time, you unlock little trinkets, which are like patches
you put on your character's backpack, and those will give
you different like abilities or augment your hop in some way,
so it'll be like. One of them is you can
eat anything you can pick up, so you can eat
like rocks and pots and stuff, and anytime you eat something,
you heal yourself a little bit. So if you're having
like a hard time, you can equip to eat everything
badge and then you're basically just always have health around.
Speaker 2: I would love to have that badge in real life.
That'd be sick. That'd be awesome. All my problems solved.
Just eat everything?
Speaker 1: Yeah does it?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 3: No, No, let's talk about the game. I was gonna
get us on a different tangent over again, Mark, as.
Speaker 1: You say what you were gonna say, I was just saying,
I like how all the NPCs just look like like
they look like animal crossing villagers if they were, if
they were all Yeah, somewhat sus like, yeah, they all have,
Like some of them have just like wide eyed, just
almost looked like they've seen things. Like some of them
just look straight up shady, like there's like there's like
a little bit of a I don't know if that
actually translates into like their characters or conversations, but just
looking at them, it's just like everyone here just looks
a little weird and off in a way that.
Speaker 2: I are you worried that something is afoot in big
hops or like you're walking into a situation where you
don't really know what's going on. But they all do
like like kind of a midsomar situation going.
Speaker 3: On, like oh wow, I'll tell you, you take two
steps into dusty bluffs and you'll know that something's wrong,
something's wrong in that.
Speaker 1: Okay, okay, yeah yeah, but uh but yeah, uh it
seems cool. I want to play it, And you know,
this is a good month for for something like this.
I said, it's available now as of this week. It's
on like you're playing on PS five, It's on Steam,
and I believe it's also on Switch. Yes, yes, yes,
kind of leaning towards my platform. I think I'm like
playing on Switch.
Speaker 3: I would like switch. I don't know how it runs
on Switch, Like I was saying, there's some like slight
technical issues on PS five, so I'm curious to see
how it performs there. I was gonna say, just on
the note of like you were talking about the character designs,
there is a character she's like a villain woman, and
she like cusses, but the game like bleeps it out,
which I think is very It's like a really good
way of like, I don't know, emphasizing how mean this
person is while still kind of keeping a kid friendly.
And also like a bleeped swear is always funnier than
an unbleeped swear because it's like you have no idea
what she said in that instance.
Speaker 1: Yeah, is it like a proper bleep or did they
have like a cute bleep or cute sensor.
Speaker 3: It's it's a proper bleep, okay. And even though like textbox,
it's like a bunch of like in a comic book
where they swear, it's just a bunch of like ampersand
exclamation point parentheses, et cetera. That kind of thing. Yeah,
that's good.
Speaker 1: Awesome, Yeah, big hops check it out now. And also
check out our new Gameplay Today video on our YouTube
channel if you want to see Charles play himself. I
referenced the Fulton recovery system in this because I've got
metal Gear on the brain, because I've finished Metal Gear
Solid Delta Snake Eater. I mentioned it last week that
it was my kind of my Winter Break game, and
I have since completed it, and I've also you know,
in another shout out to mind Max, I watched the
Deepest Dive for that game immediately highly recommend. I thought
it was very entertaining and funny, and you guys also
had a lot of really great points. I was kind
of Enhansen Boat where it was the first time I
played that game from start to finish since it came
out so about twenty years and so there were a
lot of things that I like. There were a lot
of the broad strokes that I remember, like I remember
all the boss fights and stuff. But then there are
other segments where I was like, oh, I completely forgot
this was in the game, like the the EVA babysitting part.
Towards the I was like, I don't remember this as
ad the like did they add this in the remix?
Is this is like the one thing that added. How
do I have no memory of this?
Speaker 3: Can you imagine if they remade your favorite game and
they put an undred hundred vibe but then they added
a mandatory score score for the final box fight.
Speaker 1: I said, you know what, this game was missing the
first time that I think fans would really go crazy for.
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's let's add a turret sequence while we're at it.
That game definitely doesn't have a turret sequence, right. It's
it's funny you think about mel gear Solid like three
Delta whatever. It does have a lot of those moments
that have been reviled in games. It just does them
really really well. IMO.
Speaker 1: That's and it's weird because I so I played with
the modern setup so kind of like the like the
Phantom Pain style. Basically it plays like a proper third
person shooter.
Speaker 3: And yeah, yeah, you're saying, like the camera controls.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like the camera controls and all that stuff. So
I didn't play an the original forms because like, oh
I already did that. I kind of want to see
what this looks like with modern controls. And the entwer
is good to the point of almost trivializing some of
the boss eyes or you realize like it still has
a lot of the this game is such a faithful
remake that you can still just see like, oh, yeah,
this is this is puzzle design of the era, or
like this is like a level design of like oh,
I've in my brain again my twenty year old rose
colored glasses of this game. I'm picturing like, man, this
game is like a giant forest and it was all
sprawling and you're sneaking through all these bushes and it
takes forever, and then like it's just these little like
square zones of just like here's a few trees or
some bushes. You're gonna like very quickly get to the
other side of this and transition to another area. And
you're like, oh, yeah, I guess it was. But you know,
again in two thousand and four, when this came out,
like that, like the biggest games I'd ever played up
to that point and kind of were around were like
GC or whatever. So it's like, I know it wasn't
a scale of that, but I thought like, oh, this
is like the second biggest thing I've ever played, because
look how big this forest is. And it was fun
almost kind of having that like like bucket of water
dumped on me. I'm like, oh, yeah, these were like
small little areas you can get through this game. And
also like the length of it was kind of my
biggest sort of like shell shock of like when I
realized how far I'd gotten in such little time, and
you know, I wasn't skipping cutscenes or anything like that,
and I was like, oh man, I've only put in
like five hours and I'm like, well, like way through
this game, and I didn't realize that. I guess in
my mind, the cober fights were a lot more spaced
out than they are and maybe because I I think,
like I just it just took me longer to do
things back then, where it's like now I'm a you know,
more experienced gamer, and I know how to just handle
things better. I was like, yeah, I'm just gonna get
through this sneaking area pretty quick. I'm still getting caught
every two seconds, but like I'm just tranking everyone ahead
and moving on.
Speaker 2: This is a weird philosophical question for you and maybe
for the room. Do you find that as you've gotten older,
do you focus on objectives and completion more often? Because
I was legitimately thinking about this the other day that
I think maybe not all the time when I was younger,
but certainly for a decent degree of it, I saw
games more as like play, as experience, as like creating things.
I think Charles, your example that you've given before of
the games you would create within the lego games are
a great example of this of inventing ways of play
within an established means of play. And I have noticed
that as I've gotten older, I have a very like, well,
I need to get this done, I need to complete this,
I need to move on to the next thing, because
accomplishment is the goal and objectives are the ultimate meter
of my success. And do you find that has changed
at all, Like maybe when you played way in the past,
you just did more stuff in the world that was
not tied to just moving forward.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think it's a mix of both. I mean
that mindset has definitely like that has become a thing,
especially with this job or where it is a lot
of like I need to get through this so I
can move on to the next thing that I have
to play for coverage, you know, But I also try
to make a point to like savor it and not
just make it a like I just need to get
through this, I need to like fast forward through all
the dialogues. I need to get to the thing, Like
I don't do that. But with this game, I think
because I played it before and even though my memory
was fuzzy, I still remembered like a lot of the
gameplay stuff. So there were things where like, oh, I
got through this area faster because I I know there's
nothing here, or I know a lot of the tricks,
or remember a lot of the tricks so I can
kind of just do them at will now instead of
kind of like you know, when it's your first time,
you're still poking around ye just saying like what can
I do? There was less of that, and it was
more just remembering like oh yeah, I think when I
get to the spot, I can do this, or if
I go into menu and spin around, I can make
snake throw up. And you know, it doesn't take me
like hours to discover that. I just know how to
do it. So like a bit a column may have
been a column be for this, But I think some
of that is a consequence of replaying this rather than
being my first time. Like I don't know, Charles might
be a better person to ask that too, of like
someone going to the first time, did you feel like,
and I know you were on the deadline for like
the deepest dives. He kind of did have a bit
of a like I need to get through this within
a time. Yeah, but.
Speaker 3: It was like, uh uh, I do think that was
a thing that is so it always impresses me about
the Middle Gear games, which I've mentioned a few times
on the show specifically, but it's it's been a while
that I've played them. Very recently. I played one and
two in the like HD collection and then this was
the first time I played three last August September whenever.
That was y But I am consistently impressed by the
amount of like tools.
Speaker 1: They give you.
Speaker 3: But they feel like toys, just in a way that
it's like, uh, like there's mouse traps in the game,
and you can put it on the ground and someone
will step on a mouse trap. It's not optimal there.
I never had a reason to use a mouse trap really,
but there's so many things that are like mouse trap
caliber items you can just pick up and use in
the game that I can definitely see someone being like, oh,
I want to use all these items or I just
want to use a lot of stuff and have a
lot of fun, or you can just like use the
trank gun and go through the game.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I did make a point to do things like
do things I didn't do the first time around, of
like not just relying on a trank gun, which is
like my to me, that is just the main weapon
for Snake.
Speaker 2: Yeah it is.
Speaker 1: Yeah what the PP seven is the James Bond is
the trank gun to Snake in my eyes. So like
but even in the original, like I I would kill
people if it came down to it, but this one,
I actually did a non lethal run with the exceptions.
But when I got when I got to the Sorrow Fight,
no one was there except for the bosses, so it
was like incredibly easy to get through, whereas I remember
the first time, it was a lot more of like,
oh this is this is a bit rough. There's some
like it wasn't like a complete masker, but there was enough,
like I killed enough people to make it like more
of an of an exercise to get through. So it
was fun. Like even the final like you know, I'll
avoid spoilers, but like the last quort of like big
Chase sequence, I still use the uh the TRNK for
that where it's like, I think that is when the
game gives you permission to be like you can just
go crazy now, but even.
Speaker 2: Then, actually, hey, it's it's cool, you can do you
can do this now.
Speaker 1: But I played that in the whole chase with just
the train gun, which was very dumb but very funny
because then guys are falling asleep on the motorcycle and
then crashing and exploding and dying anyway. Yeah, so it's
like but in my mind, I was like, does that
count as a tally against me? When I get the
final thing? Are they gonna say I killed them? Even
though I mean I technically didn't kill them. I don't.
I don't know if that would hold up in court
of like, well, I put them to sleep, what happens
after they go to sleep? Is that all me? You know?
Speaker 2: Batman logic over here, Like yeah, I just punched them
really hard in the head over and over again.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 3: They died three days later in the hospital.
Speaker 2: But I didn't kill it then.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't have to What was the line in
Batman begins like I'm not going to kill you, but
I don't have to say you either.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, yeah, Like I don't think I think that's
the murder. I think it's I think it's manslaughter. I
don't we don't need to get into it. Yeah, I
was gonna say the Sorrow Fight is a good example
of that game where like my issue with it now
and it's like it's like a fun thing on paper,
but when you're actually playing it's always annoying, where it's
like a lot of times sometimes there is a very
specific way you're supposed to do stuff, and just the
act of figuring that out is like really annoying. If
you think of it in the moment, or you already
know what it is, it's like a cool thing. But
that was one of the things as I was playing
the game, being frustrated and having a hard time figuring
out what the puzzle was in a game that seems
it's so cinematic and so linear that I often, uh,
Snake has such a strong personality in a way that
a lot of video game protagonists don't that A lot
of times I'm like, I'm I feel like I'm failing
Snake's legacy here by not knowing.
Speaker 2: What to do.
Speaker 3: Whereas, like, you know, if Mario has a hard time
jumping up a thing. It's like, I don't know that's Mario.
He doesn't have much of personality.
Speaker 1: I have that same reaction when I played Double Make
Cry games badly, where it's like, yeah, yeah, I'm making
him not cool if I don't get that, like if
I get like.
Speaker 3: A d yeah, master Chief would never die and I'm
you're letting him down inhalal legendary difficulty. Yeah, that's what
it feels like. But I uh, I was gonna say
also to Eric's thing earlier of like, uh, games within games,
I think of that as like games as toys, where
it's like there's no there's no like objective. This is
just like my things, and this is what they do
when they interact, and I do. I would I would
have liked to play Middle Gears Alt three Younger with
no Deadline with a bunch of like fourteen year olds,
because I feel like you go to like you go
to one friend's house and they'd be like, oh, I've
got one hundred hours. And I had one friend who
had one hundred hours in the Legends of the Twilight
Princess and did not leave Ordon Village. He like couldn't
figure out how to get out into like high rul Field,
into like the main part of the game. He just
had so much fun as like a twelve year old
just running around and jumping off stuff and fishing really badly.
Like yeah, that was enough for him going out like
chasing sheep and I don't even know how often you
can do it. It's crazy. It was like me showing him
was like there's a lot of stuff in this game
and he just had no concept of it.
Speaker 2: He like freaks out. He's like, I need to go
back again. I'm not ready for this.
Speaker 1: It's like the game equivalent of that Tiny Toon Summer
Vacation episode where they take this big road trip to
this amusement park and all Hampton's family wants to ride
the monorail, and then they leave and you're like, what
about this other stuff? Now? This this is all we need.
Speaker 2: This is the ride.
Speaker 1: I will say my biggest takeaway after playing this is
that it made me miss having a new metal gear
to look forward to, because I remember listening to The
Deepest Dive and I think it was the first episode
where you and I think Haley were sort of like
kind of jokingly but like semi seriously asking like did
you guys think this was like actually good writing. Back then,
guys were kind of making fun of it a little bit.
But I remember like also like nodding to myself, like
as a high schooler when this game came out, I
one thousand percent was like, this is peak video game.
Like this is like there's nothing like like this the intrigue,
but like this is so deep we don't even know
all the layers so far. Like video games, there's no
video game that touches metal gear with this, right it is.
Speaker 2: It is a little bit of that. I will say,
like Snake Eater is made be one of the better
written Metal Gear solids. Like two and three I think
are kind of the peak for me of that series,
and then four falls off a little bit. I never
played four. I watched I like sat on a couch
as my roommate played through four, and then five was
absolutely bonkers in every possible conceivable way. I love five
as a game. Five as a story is a completely
different scenario. But three is like three is a really
really good Bond movie or like a really good mission impossible.
That's how I always saw it is. It's got all
the spy thriller intrigue and nations, and it does have
the ending, which I think is really really solid.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was wondering how it reacted. I remember at
the time I was genuinely emotional watching that final ending
for the first time. And then like even still feeling
it now, even though I know it wasn't nearly you know,
I didn't have nearly as a visceral reaction to it
as I did the first time I played it, it
was still like, yeah, this still, this is still effective,
Like this is still like a cool revelation. I guess
even though it's it's in hindsight, it's sort of telegraphed
a lot more than I realized back then. But yeah,
and then even the final like the final final, like
post credits stinger and again going back to wanting to
live in this era of metal gear, Like you know,
now I know the answers to everything, I know the
I know where the series goes. But at the time
when you didn't, I was like, oh my god, this
is shocking. Oh, I can't wait for the next man
they did it again. Oh, I can't wait to know
where all of this is gonna go. And it did
make me a stat like man I wish I could
scrap my brain of the series and like re experience
it again and and have that Like I get the
same feeling when I think of Assassin's Creed two, where
like that for me was like the hype of intrigue
of that series with everything of like the truth and
like where are we gonna go? Oh, like the implications
of everything with the appam like, oh, I can't wait
for Assassin's Creed three, Like I wish I could go
back to that era too before they you know, kind
of fumble the bag with that stuff, at least in
my opinion. But yeah, there was like a it does
make me want to immediately replay for like I just
want to dust off my PS four and I still
have my copy of or PS three. I should say
and pop in my copy of four and play it again.
And I really hope that you get to play at Charles,
I remember you saying you were interested in I hope
you find a way to play. I think four is fascinating,
Like it's a good game. I think it's yeah, like
the story stuff because it is the Avengers in game
of metal Gear of like we have been building like
everything we've been building up to happens in this game,
and we're gonna tie We're gonna painstakingly tie up all
the loose ends in this game.
Speaker 2: It's also like gameplay wise, maybe the weirdest of the bunch,
just with I remember very specific segments of just doing
things that felt very not Metal gear solid. There's that
whole spy sequence and all that. Also, there's a podcast
in it that's hosted by Jeff Keey, Right, There's there's
like all this really weird stuff embedded in the game.
Speaker 1: There's the Universe podcast, the weird commercials when you're first installing. Yes, yeah,
action there's.
Speaker 2: That's kind of awesome though, I think and it was
it was him like smoking during the loading thing, right,
that was like infamous. Yeah, it's a forever.
Speaker 1: To install that game. They're like, you can watch snake smoke.
I guess on this bar slowly.
Speaker 2: I can forgive a lot of shortcomings of a game
just exudes itself. It's personality, it's aura that much like
if it's so obsessed with what it itself is doing,
I can I can get on board with that.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Also, I'm I'm annoyed that some stuff was A
four was spoiled for you, Charles. I was like screaming
when I was watching and Dan kind of say something
some pretty wild some pretty wild things that happening for
just kind of say. I was like, no, don't tell them,
don't tell them that.
Speaker 3: That's also a thing that like so much happens in
metal Gear and like they like the people that really
like metal Gear really like uh marinate in it and
like talk about it a lot, and I think get
more of an understanding of it. I played Metal Gear
Solid one, two, and three all within the last two
or three years, and I I would have a hard
time even giving you a basic plot rundown of all
of them. So it's a thing that like I I
think I remembered the thing that they spoiled. I couldn't.
I couldn't imagine the context that could appear in and
by the time I do actually play the game, I
will have completely forgotten.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, so tanks with legs, yes, Solid snake okay. Yeah,
And I don't know what's the third pillar of Metal
Gear series.
Speaker 2: I don't even want to. I was gonna say something else,
but that would spoil more.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, everyone's just wild. Yeah, movies who's that.
Speaker 2: Guy that farts all the time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Johnny poo his pants a lot.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Oh that's right.
Speaker 2: I do I know him. He's in MeTL Gear Solid three,
He's he's in every Metal Gear Solid is he?
Speaker 3: Oh? I thought he was introduced in this one. See
that's the kind of.
Speaker 1: This one.
Speaker 2: This game is like yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: It's it's really good and maybe really bad. Like it's
it's so specific. I have I love trying to wrap
my mind around mel Gear Solid three, where I'm like,
I have no idea how I feel about it. I
think I just like playing it. Maybe that just means good.
I don't know. But just the fact that I like,
we we had all this conversation. They're like, Charles, did
you do the thing and then go to sleep and
then play this secret second game or whatever?
Speaker 1: I was like what?
Speaker 3: And just like the Nightmare sequence and Melo Gear Slid three,
it's like a great example of like, I don't know, Eric,
you haven't listening the deepest die. But one of our
one of our bits is that we're like this game
was designed to be talked about at recess in junior high,
Like that's all everything in there is, like whoa did
you do you know you can do this and mail
your saw three? What if you spend sneak around in
the menu?
Speaker 2: Throws up no way, Yeah, and then I can't see
that I think of when I think of that, I
think of Pokemon, but that that I also also.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean it was a water like
I had that in high school, Like it was a
water cooler game of like, did you know that you
could do this? You're like, what what are you talking about?
But yes, that That is a long winded way to
say I finished Medical your Solid Delta. It's still a
really good game. It's a great remake. It's pretty much
gonna be I think the fact of way to play
the game, just because of how faithful it is. But
also it stands enough, says enough of the rough edges
down to make it like the ideal version of that game.
So highly recommend if you've ever wanted to get into
the middle of your series. And also listen to the
med Maxnifasie when a game because it's extremely entertaining. I
thoroughly enjoyed it. Other games, Eric, you have been playing
Dragon Age the Veil Guard.
Speaker 2: Which I'm for the second time. This is my second
run through the game. Yeah, So for those who don't know,
I co host a podcast called norm DFM with Kenna Sheppard.
We play through games in kind of a game club
style format, if you can tell from the name of
the show it is mostly It started as a BioWare thing.
We started with Mass Effect and dragon Age, and then
we kind of went onto other series because Byowear kind
of stopped making games for a while, and so we
did stuff like fal Fantasy ten and Last of Us
and Cyberpunk. That was a fun season and now we're
back on Biowear for dragon Age of the Veil Guard
this year. So I've been playing that for our episodes
and dragon Age is the Veilguard. We don't need to
spend too much time on it, but it was It's
such an interesting game to play. I know, this game
only came out a couple of years ago. It's not
very old and was certainly the topic of hot discussion, controversy,
just everybody just talking about it even before the game
was out, but definitely like once it was out there
in the world, it was the discourse DuJour for for
quite a bit, and so having a little bit of
space to kind of take a breath, come back and
see how I feel about the game has been really
interesting because it illustrates obviously, it's a game that's very
emblematic of how it was made, if that makes sense,
Like it was you can tell you know when you're
playing the game that there are kind of bits and
pieces that all seem reminiscent of games like Destiny and
other service games. And there's a lot of reports and
stuff out there from folks like Jason Tryer that've detailed
the long and troubled development that went behind what became
The Vailguard, which itself was Dragon Age Dreadwolf before it,
and then just Dragon Age four question Mark before that
for years and years. Wolf is still a better name.
Dreadwolf is still a better name. I still really don't
get the reasoning behind I have heard the reasoning behind it.
I've had plain to me. I still think Dreadwolf is
a better name. But it's a really interesting game to play.
In light of I almost didn't bring it up for
the podcast, and then we mentioned that, Hey, also, Anthem
shut down the other day. It is fully turned off
servers down. You basically can't play Anthem. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
In the way. That's happening to a lot of online
games and online services as they kind of launch and
find an audience or don't, and even if they do,
maybe the audience doesn't stay forever and then they eventually
sunset and we'll get into this deeper. But it felt
like a good way to kind of establish a stepping
stone into the second half of this podcast of even
Vailguard has weird stuff tied into it with I think
it has some online stuff, although most of it had
been extricated by the time it came out. But it
illustrates what bio where I was always going through throughout
the years. You know, I think a lot of people
look at Anthem and they say that that was the
example of electronic arts exerting influence on biowear, right, Like,
here's BioWare the thing that you know for mass Effect
and dragon Age. They're making an iron Man live service
shooter basically. But you go back to Mass Effect two
and they had the Cervice network. You go back to
Mass Effect three, they had loot crates. Remember lout crates,
those were in Mass Effect three. That was that was
like that was like the testing ground for them, and
I think It's been really interesting to go back through
that through the lens of the Veil Guard and just
kind of see it as right, you know, right now.
After after Veil Guard, Biowear had tons of layoffs, a
lot of talent left. A lot of people from Biowear
have been very vocal about that in the past, about
the situation that led to that and the reasons why
they have left the company. A lot of them have
gone off to spin up new places that are now
working on their own RPGs, their own games. I think
the the idea of entities outside Biowear making BioWare games
has become a very popular thing. You have games like
greed Fall and even Balder's Gate three, which is very
much a Larriyan style game, but also takes a lot
of influence from BioWare's take on RPGs. Just played DOS
two and then played BG three, and you can see
the difference. So yeah, I guess that's my winding way
of saying that I don't know that I love Vailguard.
In fact, a lot of times I dislike it.
Speaker 1: It has more or less this.
Speaker 2: I kind of like it less, and I already was
not really warm on it to begin with for a
variety of reasons, I was already kind of in you know,
I didn't review it at the time because of other
mess that happens, but I did play it, you know,
play an early copy when it came out, and and
I I think I came out of it feeling very
middling on it, Like that wasn't the worst thing I've
ever played, But it certainly wasn't you know, what I
would have hoped for from a new Dragon Age. And
now I'm playing it, and for every moment that I see,
this was the vision, this is the idea. They really
had something this stuff with. I actually just finished playing
the emeric section. If if you were familiar with Vailguard,
but there's a character who is the most vincent price
dude you have ever seen in your life, who's all
about like necromancy and the necropolis and raising the dead
and very spooky scary ghouls and can't be horror, but
also gets into some really good stuff about mourning and
grief and what it means for someone to pass on
from this mortal coil. Gets into some really good stuff
that that's like really what I would consider classic BioWare
even some of the choices that you make. There's an
infamous choice in the beginning of the game where you
choose one direction or the other very BioWare thing, and
the results of that. I did the opposite direction this
time from what I originally did, and I was shocked
by how how much it changes the world and how
much it really impacted me emotionally, even having seen, you know,
some effects of this before. There's some of the magic
still there. There's so much of the magic from people
who were trying to make the magic happen at BioWare
in this game. But then there's here's a puzzle where
you got to shoot red crystals to unlock a door,
which is maybe one of my least favorite things in
all third person action games. I dislike the hit the
switches to change the direction of the water. I dislike
the hit the things in order to unlock the door.
I think a lot of those weird environmental puzzles that
kind of just have one solution and you just have
to do it to move on to the next area
always feel bad. I've never really enjoyed them, and I
think with Dragon Age of the Vailguard, there's so much
of that just littered throughout the game that otherwise gets
in the way of what feels like a bye wear
a game, what feels like a classic maybe not so
much a Dragon Age Origins, but maybe more a mass
Effect two style game, a Mass Effect three style game.
And it's you know, I realize I'm getting into the
nitty gritty of what a biowear game is. But I've
played every BioWare game at this point, probably at least twice.
So that's what you sign up for.
Speaker 1: Well, now that you say that, replaying the Veil Guard
with the sort of like I don't know, new perspective,
has it changed your anticipation or worry level for Mass
Effect five?
Speaker 2: I mean, mass Effect five for me is not a
real game yet. Like that is, that's a trailer right now.
We've heard so little about it. There's always an n
seven day thing that comes out and they say we're
working on it. It's going to be the mass Effect
experience you want. And like, I want the best for
that team, I truly do. I want them to make
the best Mass Effect game they can. I want them
to make it happen. I also saw years of this
happening for for the Dragon Age team under EA as
they went through basically a decade of development trying to
make Veilguard happen, and it was a lot of the
same where it was just kind of a statement where
they said, we're making the best Dragon age we can.
We're working on it, don't worry.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And then and then meanwhile headlines trickled out of like
development strife, people leaving layoffs and stuff like that. Yeah. Yeah,
a lot a lot of these names moving in and out.
And so I really do I I want the best
for for the MASSIFFCT team. I also just Mass Effect
five doesn't feel like a game yet. It feels like
a concept, a thing that could happen, but until we
really see more than just I think we've had two
trailers in the piece of concept art at this point
and a box art that was that was kind of
post this early.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was picking apart.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, there's been some pieces of concept art, and
I think the box art with the character yeah, oh,
the transmission was weird. That became the Krogan Civil War
where it's a bunch of it says Krogan Civil War
under it in that kind of like motivational poster fonts,
and then it's the Krogans, but they're all shooting like
towards the camera, towards something off screen, and it only
made me think of the Nathan Fielder image of like,
here's me and my friends. They're all laughing, just off screen,
and it's with no context, with no explanation of what
they mean by Krogan civil War or what that entails
or anything. And I understand there's always ARGs and teasing
with these games that that happens, but I still think
in my personal opinion, in my personal opinion everybody who
who's watching this, I still think Mass Effect five is
we haven't seen enough of it to even really feel
like it's something that we're going to see anytime soon.
So I just don't have expectations of it sho up
anytime soon. I have the best hopes for the team,
but they're under a system that I think is has
made it difficult for them to produce what they ultimately
want to.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and out of one and it's probably wildly changing
with the EA sort of buyout. Yes, you think that
I will before we move on in Seven Day twenty
twenty six, Is this the year that you think we
get a substantial update on that game.
Speaker 2: I don't know. I don't I don't play that game.
I don't like I have a running joke with Ken
and with some other folks where we're just like, when
do you think Mass Effect five is realistically going to
show up? And I think we're still years away.
Speaker 1: And not really so, I mean, like like a real trailer,
just something to really latch on.
Speaker 2: I could I could see like a thirty second teaser, Sure, yeah,
roll out one of those, but I think anything close
to think about Dragon Age the Vailguard, we didn't see
game play until maybe like less than a year out
from the release of that game. That was a very
quick turnaround that was very again like emblematic of the
situation behind the scenes of how that game was being made,
of how it was coming together. And even that's the
other thing. I play Vailguard and I see all those
kind of gears trying to turn and lock in unison
and make a game, and the fact that it comes
together holistically and plays like a video game is in
itself a miracle. Like that's I see so many ways
in which this project could have easily fallen apart under
the weight of itself, and in fact, many of the
things they managed to do despite a decade of development
and so much investment and changes within the system is
actually kind of like, really really humbling. I think I
was remarking that there's so many options for having dialogues
fully voiced style that involve your background, like what race
you've chosen, what background your Rook comes from, whether you
were working with the Shadow Dragons or the Lord's Fortune
or something like that, and those are all voiced, and
those are all different. Which when you start to think
about how many different voices there are for Rook and
other characters that are responding to it, and then how
many different backgrounds there are, is like they really did
a lot of work to make this happen, to give
you that feeling of role playing that does feel very
central to what BioWare does. And that's the thing, is
why I keep saying I have belief and hope in
the people at BioWare that are still there. It's just
they're they're not in the best situation to make this happen.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Well, moving on from a game that feels like
it took twenty years to come out to a game
that has already been out for the better part of
two decades. Charles, you have been playing the latest edition
to the Nintendo Switch Online plus Expansion Back GameCube Library,
which is Fire Emblem Path of Radiance, a game that
was even though they announced that this would be one
of the games in sort of the initial batch when
I announced this the GameCube Library last year, it was
still I don't know, it still felt like something You're like, Oh,
I believe it when I see it, because this is
like one of the better, one of the more beloved
Fire emblementaries and also one of the more kind of
like sought after in terms of like it always commanded
like really high prices for a physical copy of it.
And I know that because I used to have a
physical copy that I sold many years ago for a
pretty penny, and I no longer regret that decision because
now I could just fire this up and play it.
But Charles, you're coming to this for the first time.
How have you been enjoying it?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I've always wanted to play this game, mainly because
people say it's good and it's like so inaccessible. I've
seen it at stores once or twice, and it's like
always the most expensive game on the shelf. Yeah, I
just pulled up eBay and just the price for the game.
We got two hundred twenty dollars, two hundred eight dollars,
one hundred thirty four dollars.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I sold mine for I think like three fifty four.
Speaker 3: Yeah something, yeah, oh yeah yeah. And this is the
first thing that's popped up on eBay. I yeah, it's
it's really expensive. So I've always wanted to check it out,
but I never have. I'm a late later comer to
fire Emblum just in that. My first game was Awakening
on the three DS, which is a game I really
really like, and it's just interesting to go.
Speaker 1: Back and play.
Speaker 3: It's really it's really interesting. Something I've always appreciated is
playing a game in a series and then playing a
game much older in a series and kind of understanding,
like what the through line of that series is versus
what I assume the through lines.
Speaker 1: Of a series are.
Speaker 3: If I'm Awakening, for example, really built around the like
support conversations of like your units fight near each other
and then they like have bonds and they grow together.
Not a thing in Path of Radiance. I don't think
it's I don't I don't know how many games, if.
Speaker 2: Any it was in pre Awakening there are support systems,
they're just not as front facing as they've become in
later games. But as far back as I think Fire
Emblem Blazing Blade, which was fire Emblem like just fire
Emblem on the Game Boy Advance here, but that's the
seventh overall game, there was definitely like I forget what
the system was that you use, but there were like
quote unquoteest here supports and.
Speaker 3: Things like that in there.
Speaker 2: So there should be support conversations in Path of Radiance
if I remember correctly, gotcha.
Speaker 3: Well, I haven't reached them yet, but it's it's certainly
not as a prominent as the other ones.
Speaker 2: But in Awakening you can pare units up, right, Like
that's that's when they started to share an where Yeah,
and it gets a lot they That's what I mean
by like, they make it a lot easier for you
to start to do that thing where you're putting units
together and having them bond in the battlefield, whereas Path
of Radiance it was there's a lot of weird mechanics
about adjacency and characters getting different stat upgrades or changing
natures depending on who they're standing next to. That I
think is kind of I don't see as often in
newer fire Moms, and I wish there was some of that.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Anyway, so I'm finally checking it out, and I
met like chapter seven, so I'm not very far in.
I'm like a few hours in, but I like it
and I like the story. That's one of the things
people really like about this game particularly, is they like
the story a lot. Also, Ike is the main character
of this game. I know him as many people do
from Smash Pros, and it's really funny to just see
a character's Smash Bros move set and try to intuit
their personality off of that. I think I thought Ike
was like a jock. Like, I thought he was like
a big meaty like because he's just like the biggest,
heaviest of the Fire Album characters.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, he's he's this.
Speaker 1: I love eating meat.
Speaker 3: That's kind of like what I assumed I was like
knowing only yes, And he's a lot he's very young
in the game and he's uh just starting out. You're
you're playing as he's the son of the head of
a mercenary company. Uh. And this is right when these
countries break out in war and they're trying to like
decide where to ally themselves at this part in the game.
And yeah, I really like it. It's really nice on
the switch. Like Fire Molm to me is a really
good uh like when when there's like cut scenes and stuff,
obviously I want to have it up on the TV.
But to me, it's always been a very good like
this is the thing in my hands while I have
a show up on the TV that I'm like half
paying attention to, or like a stream on in the background,
where uh I just like doing the strategy. It feels
like very left brain is focused on this type of
game and then my right brain is going on with
whatever else is happening.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, yeah, I think for me too, like those
games just and not just the series, but just turn
based strategy. It's just it's made for handles for me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, i'd agree with that. I play them a
lot on PC two, But that depends on the game,
you know, like x Com I think of as a
PC series versus Fire Emblem definitely for me. Game Boy Advance, uh,
Nintendo three DS, things like that. Path of Radiance was
a really interesting game when it came out because it
was the first game to try and ride the kind
of surging wave of success of Fire and Mom in
the West, because Trip Down Memory Lane, like Fire and Bloom,
was not really a series here until Super Smash Bros.
Melee brought over Roy and Marth and then people were like,
what's going on there? And Nintendo brought over the Game
Boy Advance. Guys, I've never heard of them, yeah the
first time, which is which is weird because and they
brought over the game Boy Advance games that didn't have
Roy in them. They had Ellowwood in seven and then
the Sacred Stones were a completely different story.
Speaker 1: H we can't stop talking about who.
Speaker 2: Doesn't love Hector? Is Hector and Lynn are the real
stars of seven? Let me tell you. But I I
think Path of Radiance was for a lot of people
the game that got them to play. It was also
on the GameCube, and the GameCube was I think we
have a lot of rosy nostalgia for the GameCube now,
but the GameCube at the time was like not the
most popular system. This this big tactical RPG.
Speaker 1: It had a handle on it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was at the McDonald's. It was enclosed in
the McDonald's. It's like the most protected you've ever seen
something it's in like a metal case with plastic all
around it and the controller is like locked onto the case.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think Donald's once.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I played Pickmen and Mine. They had pigment on theirs.
But yeah, like like the GameCube was, you know, kind
of in need of something like this, like a big,
meaty RPG that you could dig into, and Fire Emblem
tried to ride that wave while also doing some different
things with its story. The Mercenary story is very different
from a lot of the kind of royalty focused stories previously,
although it does eventually get there anyways, because it's Fire
and uh it's I think it's a really really fascinating
game for charting the history of the series and seeing
because it would it went to GameCube and then to
we after that, if I remember right was was Radiant
Dawn and then right back to handhelds and and that
was kind of where it lived until ultimately the Switch
came around and was the big the Nintendo thing. Moving
forward in FIREMLM could finally be on a on a
console again was a really good deal.
Speaker 1: Also still handheld at the same time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the beauty of the Switch. Yeah, it's also really
good timing because we have a new Firemblum coming out
this year, and I would hope that it takes some
some lessons from classic fire Emblum. As much as I
love three Houses, I think a lot of people are
maybe exhausted by the idea of playing another three houses size.
Speaker 1: So I was really interested.
Speaker 3: Sorry, you go ahead, Marcus.
Speaker 1: Well, I was gonna say, didn't engage kind of steer
away from at least the like kind of like the
social stuff of three Houses. And it's a little bit
more of a traditional.
Speaker 3: It's a lot engages, a lot more combat focus.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's more battle.
Speaker 2: Houses at the very least it is, but it has
a lot of like base support stuff, like I think
there was. You get a lot of characters and engage,
and then you also have the ring characters who are
kind of your fire emblem, all stars that are coming
in from all the different eras, and you have all
the support stuff with all of them, as well as
all the training missions and stuff back at the base.
And it's interesting to go back to something I would
recently playing Firemlam seven, you know, Firemlum eight on Game
Boy Advance again, and I was like, there was kind
of a streamlined aspect to those games that even up
through like fire Emblem, Fates, Conquest and things like that.
That kind of falls away as you get into the
Three Houses era and it becomes like, here are the
raising sim aspects, here's the stats that you're pumping up
every week and the calendar management that you're doing. That
was really really good. I love Three Houses, but it
the idea of doing that again definitely is like it's
a lot, that's a lot to undertake.
Speaker 3: I found it interesting because I really like like the
startupath Radiance.
Speaker 1: I've also.
Speaker 3: For me, like a FIREMM game, it's usually just like
it's not whether or not I'll like it, it's just
how long it'll hold me for. I think the only
games I've beaten are Awakening and Three Houses, but I've
played like four or five others of them for like
ten to teen hours or whatever before getting bored. But
I was like, where does where does Path the Radians
stack up in people's rankings? And I always always look
up whenever I start getting into a series how people
rank all the entries in the series. Like a lot
of times I'm more familiar with how people rank things
than I actually am with Like, I've never seen a
Fast and Furious movie, but I'm always looking at how
people are ranking those things because I'm so curious, like,
how are they different? Are they different?
Speaker 2: Is there, Oh, there's a correct answer to what the
best fast movie is?
Speaker 3: Is it faster?
Speaker 1: Answer?
Speaker 3: Is it Fast five?
Speaker 2: It's Fast five, Kay, that's the best one.
Speaker 3: I ain't seen any of those movies. And I've looked
this up enough times that I'm like, I think everyone
really likes Fast five.
Speaker 2: Fast five is really good. Like it's just if I
had to show someone one Fast and Furious movie, it's
that one.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think there's also a consensus on the worst.
Speaker 2: Fast movie, is it like I don't know nine or
something like that, Like after they kind of I was
gonna guess too, I think I think that.
Speaker 1: Is the worst one. Well.
Speaker 2: Two, I haven't seen it since it came out, but
I could see having some like nostalgic fun with two.
Whereas I think once they got into kind of seven
and eight and it just kept going, it was like, Okay,
now we're we're really like trying to draw water from
the rock here. Literally in some cases, we're trying to
get water from the rock here.
Speaker 1: Also just makes me want to fire and bloom fast crossover,
Like I want the fast characters in a fire style game.
You want to raise their bond.
Speaker 3: Give Dominic Toretto a battle axe.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, agreed, what I.
Speaker 3: Was gonna say. I was curious about how people rate
a path radiance, and it's very variable.
Speaker 1: They change a lot.
Speaker 3: Also, I don't know the numbers of the games, Like
it's not in the titles all the time, so a
lot of people put the numbers of the game, like
I don't know which Firemblum fourteen is. But that's fine.
But I was surprised that, like to my knowledge, three
Houses at the very least was very popular and sold
very well, and I like it a lot. A lot
of people liked it a lot. And it's always interesting
me when you go into like when you don't look
at Fireman from the outside and it's like, what is
the fire emblem? Subreddit think most people don't have three
Houses very high because it's it's not the traditional style
of game for them. They don't think of that. And
I think if they don't think of three Houses.
Speaker 1: That's the mainstream normy fire.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a whole thing.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the party pal, this is well, this is
also my I was looking up the tomb Raider games
because I've only played the like reboot trilogy.
Speaker 3: I haven't played any of the older ones, but there's
a lot of older ones and I was looking it
up and for whatever reason, expecting I'm like, well, the
new ones are really good. So everyone have those up
really high, and a lot of people have them like
at the bottom They're like, I hate these reboots, I
hate whatever, and I'm just like, as.
Speaker 1: I think they're insane because those old games don't hold
up as much as I have fondness for.
Speaker 2: Them, so as somebody that does a lot of podcasting
and writing and covering beats that stretch back a fair
number of years, like fighting games and RPGs. Uh, there
are always the diehards who have a very firm like
this is when the genre peaked and we have lost
our way. I think they can sometimes have a point
but also get a little too much lost in their
own sauce for that.
Speaker 1: And it's also incomprehensible water puzzles and those games.
Speaker 2: There there are people here. Here's a fun fact. There
are people like like when Fall Fantasy sixteen came out
and people were like, is this Final Fantasy. There were
people when Final Fantasy seven came out that were like,
this isn't Final Fantasy. People still yeah, yeah, there are
still people who believe that every thing posts nests is
not like Final Fantasy proper and all that. Uh it's
it's oh boy, it's a deep rabbit hole. When it
comes to fire emblem. For my personal taste, I do
think Path of Radiance is at least like a top five,
top six fire emblem. I would put it in that ballpark.
I would have to think harder about my rankings, but
I do know that like Awakening Sacred Stones, three Houses, uh,
path of Radiance, and then I don't know, maybe throwing
like a Shadows of Valentia or something like that, or
if you want to get like really esoteric, get like
a Thrashia seven seven six In there.
Speaker 1: I was hoping you would say, because I've only beaten
one fire emblem and no one ever talks about it.
And there was which one Fates? On which one?
Speaker 2: I do? I yea which version of fates?
Speaker 3: There's the three Red, the Red Birthright, birth Right.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I don't remember the subtitles, but this is.
Speaker 2: This is part of the weirdness with fire emblem, especially
fates Is and why I personally kind of bounce off
face even though I did enjoy it when I played it.
It's so much to get through, and the three pronged
in nature that they tried just didn't really make sense
for what they did. Because there's like birthright, which is
they did the Pokemon thing where it's like, to you
side with this side or this side, but then they also.
Speaker 3: Made it's more distinct than Pokemon at the very least.
Speaker 2: Well so, so it's birthright is one side, conquest is
the other. And I think one of them is your
birth family, one of them is your adoptive family. I
always mix up which one is which because it then
gets really weird because you do then have social links
with that, and it gets very game of thronesy, and
and then you have revelations is like the Golden Mouth
the True Route, and it's like, that's okay, why why
do that? I know, it's like a it's a visual
novel thing. It's an adventure game thing to do that
sort of here's the Golden path, here's the True Route.
Even games like Triangle Strategy recently have done that, but
it's it's a weird way to lay out your game
and then do it like a Pokemon where you have
actual different carts and then you have to like, well,
it was different downloads, and then you had to get
the special edition card to have all three of them
on there. It's a whole thing. That's why Fates falls
off for me. I do love Conquest quite a bit, Okay.
I was never clear how cool or laying that made
me with the fire in the community to be like inmates.
And that's the only one I've finished.
Speaker 3: In the rankings, a lot of people had Conquest relatively high,
and Birthright wasn't as high, and no one talked about.
Speaker 1: One. I guess, yeah, I think it's the easier one.
Speaker 3: I think it's interesting combat wise, Yes, Conquest.
Speaker 2: Is the one that is the most interesting combat wise
for sure.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I don't even know what man in my decision
to choose one or the other.
Speaker 3: Honestly, I also at the time I also picked that one.
For what it's worth. It's like, it's like you were
raised by an evil family, but you were born to
a good family. I'm simplified it was, But Conquest is
you're like I'm gonna stick with the evil family, and
Birthright is like I'm gonna go with the my good.
Speaker 2: Well, one family wears all like black and purple and
gold basically, and the other one is kind of wearing
this like red and white, very like samurai inspired armor
and stuff like that, and then the other one is
the route where you just ignore all of that and
do something else and golden path. It I didn't to.
Speaker 3: Like to round it out. I did want to say
that part of my moral of a story here with
like bringing up all these like different comparisons of like
within the Firemlum community, people don't like this popular one
or that just being a regular thing, a thing that
as like a games writer, I try to remember is
like trying really hard to not be as influenced by
outside perspectives or like what is the legacy of this
thing and not necessarily think of like is this a
good blank game? And more just like is it a
good game? Do I like it? Does it connect with me?
Speaker 2: Because it's very.
Speaker 3: Easy to get bought like of again, another example of
Classical and his people in the Zella community don't like
Breath of the Wild, and it's like that's like one
of the best games of all time, and it doesn't
do a lot of things old Zelda games did, but
it's still a very good game. And we could evaluate
it based on like how similar is it in the
way a lot of people value plow games, is like, well,
how similar is this the ockrene of time? Because if
it's not similar, then it's not a very good game,
because that's the perfect game.
Speaker 2: When will When will a game finally make me young
again so I can experience wonder and whimsy? That's that's
why it didn't.
Speaker 3: Come out in nineteen ninety eight, So I'm not really
a fan of it.
Speaker 2: This game came out when I was a smaller person
who understood less of the world and had troubles on
their mind. And really, if a game can't do that,
then what are we doing? Exactly?
Speaker 3: All this is to say, I do like Path Radians.
I'm gonna keep playing it. I will see if it
becomes the third fire Emblem game I reached the end of.
But even if it's not, I like, I always like
those fifteen hours I get to play of a.
Speaker 1: Firearm game I have no time. Yeah, well awesome, Well
we're gonna spin off of that discussion because we're gonna
take a quick break and then come back and we're
going to discuss the state of subscription service is, including
a Nintendo Switch Online. We'll be right back.
Speaker 3: Welcome back to the Game Informer Show. We are now
going to talk about a little bit of pivot. I
wanted to bring this topic up because it's something I've
been thinking about kind of in like it's the new year,
I'm kind of wanting to, you know, trim trim my
finances a little bit. And it's like, do I really
need to be paying for all these things that I'm
paying for? Because I'm paying for a lot of things,
and as always, i'd like to be paying for the last.
So I was just gonna talk about like the state
of specifically video game subscriptions, and this is stuff like
the Big three, like Nintendo, PlayStation, Xbox, they're big subscriptions,
but then also like smaller things we might be paying for.
And I almost just curious of like the kinds of
things Marcus or Eric are like, you know what, this
is worth me paying some kind of like niche thing.
It's like this is worth me subscribing for or not
subscribing for, et cetera, et cetera. So yeah, first off,
game Pass, are you guys subscribed to Xbox game Pass?
Speaker 1: I am, However, at least with my current subscription disclaimer,
it was provided by Microsoft for media press reason, so
that we can so that we have access to and
in case we want to, you know, day one releases
whatever play for like work stuff. But before that I
had been paying for it pretty much NonStop since pretty
much since this exception. Actually I'm trying to think. I
don't think I've ever let it lapse ever since they
started doing it.
Speaker 3: I I did have it lapsed for a hot minute,
and then I also this is this is like right
when game and Former started back up, So Eric wasn't here,
but we all got game Pass like one year of
game Pass code. So sorry Eric for being excluded for now.
Speaker 2: I'm good. I'm going to say something bold here. I
did have game Pass for I think up until about
this year, maybe around January February. I cut it, and
that was a cost saving thing, but also it made
me realize how little I actually used it. Yeah, because
I mean number one, like, I already owned most of
the games that were on the service that I cared
about in the first place. Like I bought the Halo
master Chief Collection when it came out. I bought Halo
Infinite when it came out, Like I wasn't really using
those avenues to play those games in the first place.
But then also, I it is you know, quote unquote
best value in gaming and all that kind of stuff.
But it kind of made me realize that paying a
lot of money for a lot of games that I
might play one day is not always the best thing
and made me kind of personally reconfigure the way I
think about having access to games versus owning games and
playing said games. So, yeah, that game Pass was the
start of that for me, which will probably dovetail into
what we're going to be talking about for all this segment.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I I I have definitely had it laps at times,
and then I've gotten it back. I've tried to specifically
when I'm paying for game Pass because it does cost
so much money. Now it's just a thing to me
of like I'll just be default unsubscribed. And then if
there's a pattern of like two or three games on
game Pass coming out at once, or it's like one
is coming out and I'm like, oh, I wanted to
play these other ones. That's when I'll be I'll treat
it as like a purchase basically, and be like, I'll
buy a month of game Pass to play the games
that I want to play. There's no reason in being
subscribed if there's going to be like months at a
time that I'm not spending any money. But also it's
so expensive now the prices I got them pulled up here,
so game Pass Essential. Also they keep changing the names,
which is confusing. There used to be game Pass Core
and then they changed it, and then the Premium, and
then they added Ultimate or.
Speaker 1: Maybe Microsoft naming things in a confusion.
Speaker 2: Fact you're excited to boot up cob pilot office.
Speaker 1: Yeah, im possible.
Speaker 3: So the Essential tier is ten bucks a month and
it gets you fifty plus games, it says, I don't
know how many games that is on Xbox PC and support.
It's more than it's probably probably fifty one. You can
also stream games, including some games that you own, so
you can't stream all the games you own. You can
stream I think the game Pass games you can play online.
There's some rewards thing and then you get benefits for it, says,
games like League of Legends and Call Duty War Zone.
That's like a pretty standard thing. They started adding in
little goodies to be like justify the price increase in
my mind, But it's also kind of like a marketing
thing to me. Of like, it's nice if you're already
playing you know, Warzone and you were subscribed to game Pass,
but to me, it's more of a like a way
for both of those audiences to advertise to the other.
Speaker 2: That's the weird part for me was it was kind
of a big deal when Riot made the deal with
Xbox to say, so, if you have game Pass, you
have access to every League of Legends champion, you have
access to I think all the Valorant Agents and things
like that. But the power users who were going to
take advantage of that in the first place probably already
had access to the majority of characters that they wanted
to play as in the first place. Funny enough, it
made it kind of annoying because I would go play
a mode called a ram all random all middle in
League of Legends, and it would random me into a
character that I didn't like, or I didn't previously own
and had never played before. I'd be like, I don't
want to play this character. I want to play ash,
I want to play in Italy, I want to play
somebody who's good.
Speaker 1: In a RAM.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and introduced a new dynamic there. But yeah, it's
it's access to a lot of things. But then I
always ended up questioning like I was paying a lot
of money and that was even before the price increase
for access to games that I wasn't always playing. And
they also adjusted the way that new games were going
onto it too, so you kind of lost that benefit.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So to that note, then there's the Premium tier,
which is fifteen bucks a month, so five more bucks
a month. This is two hundred games on these devices.
And then this one gets you new Xbox games within
twelve months of launch. So they had like a day
one on game Pass thing, and then they split it
into tiers another kind of like breaking down when you
get it. The main one that they want you to
get it used to just be what game Pass was
is now the Ultimate tier. It has the full Library,
which says is five hundred plus games if there's a
first party Xbox game, and just you know, all of
all of that. The Microsoft, Activision, Blizzard, whatever entails it
decides to do that. That's all on day one on Ultimate.
It all so includes Fortnite, Crew, EA Play, and Ubisoft
Plus Classics. You can stream games, and it says it
has the shortest weight times. Notice how the lowest tier
didn't mention the weight times. But there are theoretically wait
times you're trying to stream stuff and then all the
other stuff that they mentioned. But that's thirty dollars a month,
which when they increased that price, I remember being like,
that's crazy, and it's still like every time I see it,
I'm like, that's so much money.
Speaker 1: I should make it clear too that when they increased
the price, we had already gotten our like press game
Pass subscriptions, and I remember thinking the sun God for that,
because that would have been, Yeah, that would have been
when I canceled my game pass. Yeah yeah, yeah, I can't. No,
I'm not doing that.
Speaker 2: I think that's more money than I've paid for any
other subscription monthly service that was not like a phone
bill or something.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's no there's no like t like, none of
the TV streaming services cost anywhere near that.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean them together, Well, okay, if you if
you get the big bundle, if you get really was
a Disney Plus ESPN stuff like that.
Speaker 1: That's the exact bundle that I currently pay for each month.
Because WU moved the ESPN. I was like, oh, I
have to have that now to watch the pay per views.
Damn it. They decided to move from the super cheap
peacock to this.
Speaker 2: Remember remember when it was like everything was on cable
packages and everybody complained about cable packages. And then we
got streaming and everyone was like, oh, we love streaming,
this is great, this is the future. And then streaming
killed the cable package and then became it and and
now we're all standing there on Moustafar yelling down at Netflix.
You were the chosen one.
Speaker 1: I don't even thinks this is a tangent, but it's
just the problem is that everyone started making a streaming service.
Speaker 2: Mm hmm.
Speaker 1: You know, it made more sense when they were like
a handful of them, but now everyone has one, so
then inevitably they're gonna get balled out by someone else
and then get bundled, or they're gonna start talking to
each other and say, hey, let's help each other out.
Let's let's bundle each other. We could do that.
Speaker 3: I also don't think it's not Netflix's fault, like I
think I think they should.
Speaker 2: I think they have some game in there, but.
Speaker 1: I mean by existing, it's their fault. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's one of the larger scapegoats in the herd.
Let's put it that way. Yeah, if there's a herd
of goats, of scape goats that we can point at,
it's one of the larger goats.
Speaker 1: And then I guess we can blame them for for
game Pass too, because game Pass was built. It's like,
this is the Netflix a game, the Netflix of video games.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, uh anyway, so that's that's like I think
when people talk about a game subscription, this is the
one that's in the news the most, like that we
would cover the most. It was kind of the quintessential,
Like just the concept of this was so I think
ridiculous when it was announced that people like.
Speaker 1: Remember the three when it was announced and everyone was
like buying up game Pass descriptions when they have that
weird loopholear were like you can get like you can
stack multiple years for like a dollar or five dollars. Yeah,
but I remember being at Eddie three and all my
media friends being like I'm buying so much game yes, yes,
right now because this is like an incredible value.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I remember this is and I think, I think
to our point, so we're talking about like playing it
or not playing it with game Pass, I think the
ideal situation for game Pass, if you want to actually
get the most value out of it, is for someone
that is new to video games getting an Xbox Series
S and like the premium game Pass subscription, which is
like the middle tier UH and Xbox Series S is
a way to be like, I've not played video games before.
Speaker 1: This is gonna be more games than I.
Speaker 3: Could possibly want on a relatively cheap console, and I
don't have to commit to anything right away, and it's
a good way to like test out what you're interested
in and is a relatively and now it's all obviously
getting more and more expensive, relatively low barrier to entry
to try a lot of stuff out. Once you are
like at our spot, or you're just someone that's played
games for a while, or you're someone that has been
subscribed to game Pass for a while, it does get
to a point where it's like the back library isn't
as important as the new stuff that's coming out, And
when it's thirty dollars a month, It's not that crazy
to be like, I'll just wait and buy the three
you know, seventy dollars games a year that I actually
want to play the day that they come out, and
it'll end up being you know, less than or similar
to whatever the cost of what game Pass was. It's
not necessarily something that it's like a must have like
I think.
Speaker 1: It used to be, or like it's weird. It's it's
game Pass is almost kind of benefiting from the rising
prices of games now because now games are starting to
become like new releases are hitting eighty dollars, so it's
making by default, game Pass look even more like a value.
Even if it did, or at least the highest tier
got bumped up the thirty dollars, that's still fifty dollars
less than like what is going forward to be the
standard price for a first party Xbox game, because last
year was when they started saying, hey, going forward, all
of our big games are going to be eighty bucks.
That's just you know, it's just what we're doing now.
So it's like, yeah, I can still buy if I
want to play Gears of War E day, it is
still much cheaper to like, I'm just gonna pay thirty
bucks for a month of game Pass than to buy
this outright, assuming that you don't care about actually owning
the game, which, at least increasingly as the generations get younger,
that seems to be less and less of a concern
for most players of like, I don't really care about
owning my games, or at least they think they don't care.
Maybe they think because some people think that they own it,
but then they're like, you actually don't.
Speaker 2: But I'm gonna I'm going to push lightly back on
this because there has been a surge and and it's
it's worth looking this up a lot of like like
the youngest generation right now, Like I know what we're
on now is alpha Yeah.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 3: Yeah, what we're talking about, Like.
Speaker 2: Even even in zoomer culture and things like that, there
has been a rising sentiment of owning media where physical
MP three players have come back. Physics cameras that are
separate from your phone camera are big right now. Film
cameras are big again. They're they're genuinely because of the connectedness.
And I do think that then dovetails into streaming, where
one thing that I think across the board, we're going
to talk about as we get into other subscription services,
is that a lot of them promised the idea of
an expansive catalog, but that catalog doesn't go as far
back or as deep as you would think or hope
it would, especially from platform holders that would theoretically have
better access and availability to this stuff. Like there's a
lot of games that for a while, I actually think
Microsoft was being really good about this and putting a
lot of games out there that were like, Hey, here's
an updated version that's going to run better on Xbox
Series X, and it's going to be really awesome. I mean,
you know, our our friend Wesley, Well, we'll tell you
all about how Final Fantasy thirteen runs on the Xbox
Series X, like Cowskim Home. But there's been a lesser
surge of that over the years, and it's really changed
a lot of my feelings on this stuff, because initially
I was like, oh, subscription services can provide some funding
and some like carrot reasons for the publishers to want
to put their back catalog out there, to want to
support this stuff. And instead that hasn't really been happening
as often. It's slowed down a lot and that's been
a bummer to see.
Speaker 1: I wonder because we're we're in a unique position of,
you know, working in games media, which necessitates having to
spend most of our time focusing on like the latest
and greatest releases, Like we don't really have the luxury
to dive into our backlogs as often as maybe we would, like,
do you guys think if you weren't doing this job
and you weren't beholden too having to keep up with
everything new, would game Pass be more enticing? Because for me,
I rarely find myself playing it, mainly because I'm so like, well,
I always have something new I have to be playing
or want to be playing that. It's very rare for
me to just be like, oh it's in a game
Pass libry, Oh I've played this, I'm gonna install this
and play this, just because it's just it's harder for
me to find the time. But if I did not
have that, I feel like I would be more likely
to be like, because there is things in that library,
it was like, hey, I would I would love to
sit down and play it as I've been It's been
on my list, you know, for a while, and it's
just here, but man, where would I find the time?
You know that kind of thing, And I wonder how
much this job sort of affects at least sort of
like the back catalog of game Pass, how often you're
you're diving into it.
Speaker 3: So I don't remember what year it was because when
game Pass was like announced, I fully didn't understand. I
think I saw enough headlines because I was I was
like what in high school. I don't know a year
it came out, but I was not like I was
certainly not working in games media, and it was a
thing I wasn't really paying attention to. And remember one
day being like, Okay, what ily is this? Oh this
is crazy. I can just have a bunch of games
if I pay one dollar. And then I did initially
do that, like I played a bunch of specifically that's
how we played Dead Cells for the first time. There's
specifically a lot of like indie games that I wouldn't
have I wouldn't have gone out and spent the full
price on without knowing what they were and was able
to like try them out. I think nowadays I it's
less appealing, probably because I do have that games media
where I'm playing the newest thing a lot of the time,
or I know about the latest thing, and so when
you know, like Resident Evil Village just came to game
Pass and I or is coming soon. I can't remember
exactly what date it comes out to game Pass, but
that was one I just played because I was doing
on the backlog over the winter break. I was just
going through these Resident Evil games for whatever reason. Perfect
example of a thing that like a lot of Game
Reformer staff played when it came out because it was
like one of the big games at the time that
someone might be like, oh, I missed this at the time.
Uh so, yeah, I don't know if it's we'll get
into some of the other services in a second. I
don't know if I would be on game Pass specifically.
I think there's other services that are more specific to
the types of games that I would play in the
way that I play them. But I do think it
is more appealing if you're not obsessed with the next
biggest thing. Also because Microsoft and Xbox like so rarely
is what I would consider like the big game of
the time, like actually coming out on game Pass, like
a lot of times it's on other platforms to me
or not exclusive to that.
Speaker 1: I asked, because I have a friend who is not
in the industry, but it's like a hardcore gamer. Like
we play games together a lot, and he is like
the opposite. We're like he is the game pass person
or like he is always downloading stuff, and he keeps
track of what's coming and going, and he'll if he
sees like the list of what's leaving this month, he'll
like go out of his way to play it. Yeah, yeah,
because like, oh I haven't played this one. I don't
know when it's coming back. I better get to it.
So like and again, he is someone that is not
behold into keeping up the new stuff. In fact, he
kind of he only plays like a few new things,
or at least like he doesn't. He only plays like
a few of like what would be like the new
games that year each year. I guess. So he's leaving
he's living sort of the like charms of non games
media civilian life of like, wow, that must be nice
to just you're just gonna play those old stuff whenever
you want what and you just have this library of
weird things that either look cool or like I don't
know who this is, but I'm just gonna try because
I can do that.
Speaker 3: I think to my point earlier about like fandoms of
specific games kind of wharping what someone might think that
like the opinions of a game are. I think I
think every games media person needs to have at least
a few people in their lives that play games regularly
that like do not pay attention to like the discourse
or like what's popular or whatever. Yeah, just to be like, oh, yeah,
this is what this is what people actually care about,
or what a different type of person than what I'm
used to interacting with actually character It's like, this is what.
Speaker 1: Is really the jordy of like the world the gaming
world kind of behaves of, Like if you get out
of our ultimately small media enthusiast bubble and get more
to like here's like the average gamer more.
Speaker 2: Or less, you know, like there's there's different levels of involvement,
and I think, yeah, the important thing I would note
there is people who definitely are not like they're enthusiasts,
but they're also so one of my friends that I
won't name you by name, but he's he's got kids
and and he's he's got a wife and all that,
he's got a got a home life, and so he's
definitely a gaming enthusiast, but a lot of the stuff
he plays is stuff that he can either kind of
hop in for just a round or two, or something
that he can pause and step away from. So he
plays Rim World. He was playing Tarkov for a long time.
I think he got into Arc Graders when that came out.
But he likes just kind of stuff that he can
also play at his PC, because that's like kind of
his his bastion, you know, it is where he can
go and have his time and then come back out
and do family stuff versus like another one of my
friends who is traveling all the time, and so he
likes stuff on his switch on his handheld because he
travels for work, and so he tends to just play
whatever random games kind of catch his attention on the switch.
And so I do think for for what's worth having
those kind of dowsing rods to say, like, what what
do people do when they're not just trying to always
play the new thing and be plugged into every single
stream that comes out and stuff like that. Is One
of my other friends like would just play Final Fantasy
Tactics on his phone all the time. Like that was
the game he played was he would just do a
new run of Tactics and then Evelise Chronicles came out.
He was like, sick, I'm gonna play Evilise Chronicles all
the time on my switch.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 2: I love that. I love that for him.
Speaker 3: The people usually have like their one game and it's
like a live service game or like a shooter or something,
and he's like, nah.
Speaker 2: If you're gonna pick one game, Final Fancy Tactics is
a hell of a game.
Speaker 1: Have you ever read that? Like Will Wright, I remember
in an interview like forever Ago, talked about his daily
routine and how he started every day by playing Advanced Wars.
He said that was so funny. Ritual. He wakes up
and he plays Advanced Wars because he said it helps
him get his brain going.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's me in the sixth grade. That's literally me
in the sixth grade morning. Yeah, yeah, yeah, wake up,
clock in. It's time to move tanks.
Speaker 3: All right, Well, I'm gonna move on to the next
next service and we'll I'll pick up the pace a
little bit. I want to spend a little more time
in game Pass because it kind of a big one.
Next up, we have PlayStation Plus. This is the one
that most recently I have spent the most time subscribed
to because I specifically only play on my PS five.
I don't boot up my Xbox very often. I don't
know why. At PS five is just the one that
I've I've locked on to. Place in Plus is sent
choll uh. First of all, gives you online multiplayer. A
lot of these are you kind of need to have
online multiplayer, which is a very console thing, not really
like a PC thing. It also has uh cloud storage
for like your save data and stuff. It has a
feature called share play, which I didn't realize was a
thing that it had, where basically you can get someone else,
uh to like work into your console. And so that's
the way you can do like sorry, that's that's the
verb they always use.
Speaker 1: That fan bye, That's that's I've never thought of it
like that, but.
Speaker 3: I honest to god, I learned that. Also, if you're familiar,
war working is a thing in Game of Thrones where
you you basically project your consciousness into an animal. And
this in this case, where you're projecting your console's consciousness
into another concert.
Speaker 1: Your eyes roll behind your head as you're like, hey, no,
God War real quick.
Speaker 3: But it's like it's like a remote play where like
you're both playing on the same console, and I think
you can use it to do like local co op
stuff from online.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that was.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that might have been how I played
a way out.
Speaker 1: That's yeah, that's a perfect example.
Speaker 3: Of one of those anyways.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 3: And then they also have monthly free games, so if
you're just subscribed to Places of Plus Essential tier, you
just got like three or four games every month, and
they're usually a mix of PS four and PS five games,
though recently they might have phased out the PS four
I don't really pay attention because I only play in
PS five. But that's also a fun thing of me,
just one of the reasons I don't use game Pass
as much anymore, because I'm like, huh, that game, I
wonder if I just own it?
Speaker 1: Oh I do.
Speaker 3: It was a PlayStation Plus a free game they gave
out in like November of twenty twenty two, and I've
been subscribed since then, and I guess I own that game,
and that's that's something I like about it. I recently
have unsubscribed just because I forgot to re up it.
But yeah, are either of you PS plus users? Eric
made a face that I feel like he definitely is not.
Speaker 2: I know I am, and you reminded me I need
to turn it off because I I literally only sub
to it when I need it for a multiplayer and
that's really frustrating for me because I used to use
the cloud save option sometimes but it really wasn't a
thing that I ever got around to all that often,
and it's the multiplayer requirement that can be coming back.
I mean, it was nice to get gendre Arc for
free when they re released that for PS four. That
was sick. We all love gendre Arc around here, but
I've never I've never heard of it, but I probably
own it, you know. It's like, yeah, it's it's it's
fire emblem. But Joan of Arc and she was if
she was a power Ranger. It's it's awesome. It's really
good high record.
Speaker 3: I'm sold.
Speaker 2: But honestly, like again, the PS plus titles kind of
dried up for me over the years.
Speaker 3: And.
Speaker 2: I really wholly especially like once I started playing on
PC again, which was I think I built my gaming
PC around twenty fourteen twenty fifteen, and then kind of
gradually moved everything over as the console generations went on,
to the point that, like, by twenty nineteen, twenty twenty,
I was playing most stuff on either my PC or
my switch. I still am to this day mostly play
on other PC or switch. And it gets really annoying
when you have that moment of Oh, I want to
play night Rain with my friends, but I have to
pay money to do it, even though if I just
bought this, if we all bought this on Steam, we
wouldn't have that. We wouldn't have to do that, And
that's very frustrating, to be honest, and I kind of
wish that wasn't in the equation for any of these services,
even the ones I like.
Speaker 3: There's so there's some that are like exempt from it.
Like I'm pretty sure I think it's a fairly so. Yeah,
the box like Fortnite, you don't have to pay any
money for.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there are games that get exceptions. Yeah, interesting to
note which ones get exceptions and which ones don't, is
what I will say. But it's definitely like, I think
that's just a bummer. And also it's just I don't
use it for anything else, and it doesn't give me
value anywhere else, because again I'm not really dipping. I
will say that Sony's retro catalog is pretty decent, so
when we get into those later tiers, they do get
into some games that I think they do plumb the
depths a little bit more in ways that ape appealed
to me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I guess for me, I've had PS plus sins
this inception because for most of my pretty much I've
owned every PlayStation console, and from the PS one onwards
it became my primary console of choice. So when PSN started,
I was like, well, yeah, I'm going to get this
because at the time I I've not gotten a three
sixty yet, so I was like, this is my online
game machines, this PlayStation. I also was not a PC
gamer for the majority of my life, so I'm just
sort of like I've just had it. It's just been
a legacy subscription, you know. It's the oldest one that
I've had of all the other ones. And when PS
plus started doing a free games thing, I was like, oh,
this is incredible. They were like one of the first
ones to ever do it, if not the first of Like,
here's free games to sweeten the pot. Because the Xbox
Live wasn't doing that they.
Speaker 3: Did, there was, there was Games with Gold.
Speaker 1: Did they start doing the free games of Gold before
PSN started doing it or after?
Speaker 3: I feel like it was before, But I also I
had an Xbox before I had a PlayStation, so I
don't really know all.
Speaker 2: I don't remember the timing, but I do remember that
the big difference was Games with Gold gave you the game,
like you got ownership of the game, versus it being
tied to you maintaining your subscription status.
Speaker 3: Well, you access it on PlayStation. Plus you I still
have the games despite my subscription being lapsed.
Speaker 1: Why are your life? I don't think you can fire
it up.
Speaker 3: I'll double check, but I'm pretty sure you can. I'm
pretty sure it gives.
Speaker 1: Them to you.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna do some some research real quick. Well, continue discussing.
Speaker 1: Journalism is happening right now? Yeah, live on the air,
but yeah so. But it was at least for me,
it was my first time being like, well, you're kid
just giving me games being subscribed it's crazy, and again
not having as many responsibilities, I was like, oh, I'm
I'm gonna make copious use of this. And as time
has gone on and especially again once I started, you know,
doing this for a line of work, like I can't,
I almost never touched my PS. It went from like
I stopped really playing the new PS plus games to
where I even stopped checking where I used to make
it like I was on a clock of like, okay,
first of the month, let's see what's here. And now
I'll go like two three months and I'll go like,
oh yeah, I mean I guess I just check this.
Like I'll just happen to log into my PS five
one day and be like I haven't checked this in
a while. What I got over here? And we're like, oh, okay, cool,
I'm gonna ask to my library and probably never see
them again. Uh So it's become. But the thing that
keeps me subscribed is really the thing that got me
in the first place is you needed to play online,
And I justify it as a work expense at this
point where it's like I review enough things on PlayStation
or enough games come out where like I might need
that online subscription, this might have an online mode that
I need to access, or you know, just something like
I don't want. It's very much the like just in
case sort of thing of like I don't want to
suddenly run into a situation where was like, oh I
want to play this online, Oh right, I let I
don't have that subscribe. I got to re up for
a month and then and then it becomes a question like,
well do I pay for a month? What if it
happens again next month? And then I'm tending to me
paying more if I'm buying a month a month and
instead of just like multiple months. And this job is
enough reason for me to be like, I just need
to have this successible at all times because I don't
know what's going to get pass my way that needs
to be online, you know what I mean. So that's
how I justify keeping it to this day. Unfortunately, they've
raised the price on that too in the last couple
of years or so. But yeah, it's it's just becom
ingrained in my like budget at this point that I
don't notice or minded it. It's it's weird, but that's
that's my justification. We're keeping it.
Speaker 2: A quick note, the Virtual streets are saying that you
do need to maintain your subscription to maintain access to
any PS plus premium or free games that you have acquired.
Uh so you it will it will lock if you
if your subscription lapses.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I was going to say that was always That's fascinating.
Speaker 2: There there were individual reports of people who like left
the game open after their subscription ended, and they were
able to keep playing the game so long as their
console didn't turn off, or they're like the close the
game and switch to a different game or something. It's like,
but the second they did it then locked out.
Speaker 1: It's the equivalent of being in a store when it's
closed and they like they won't let anyone else in,
but you can still finish your.
Speaker 2: Purchase, exactly exactly. You can stay in toys r Us
as long as they don't catch you. That's that's accurate. Okay.
Speaker 1: I guess I just always say do that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, don't don't get toys r us. Okay, I yeah,
I guess it just always stays subscribed. So I guess
it's not the same. Interesting, Well, that's worse then, But
I still I still use it, and I still like
having the games. I guess the quote unquote having the games,
this is a this is a continual thing.
Speaker 2: I think.
Speaker 3: I think the two biggest things that we'll talk about
are one, Uh, is this this ownership thing. This is
particularly an issue for me with the Nintendo stuff, where
it's like subscriptions have replaced owning stuff and you don't
really ever own things. We're just rent everything. And a
frustrating reality that like stuff like the fact that I
have I have my wall of all these different games
behind me are things I can always boot up and
go back to and play and be like, oh, I
remember playing this game in likeness game or not or whatever.
That just I just still have those memories, just a
weird thing of me being like, yep, oh I eventually,
you know, twenty years from now, I might not even
be able to access, you know, my PlayStation plus library
and it'll be like, oh, remember when you had all
those games?
Speaker 1: Too bad?
Speaker 3: We closed or we did whatever and we shut it down.
Speaker 1: Does that make you feel better when you've technically never
owned them, because now you know, like the moment you
let the subscription laps, they took away from you.
Speaker 3: Anyway, Uh, to be honest of how I feel, I
feel like you each personally took like three hundred games
out of my library that I amassed over the last
five years that I had, And now that I have
the knowledge that I don't have them, it's your fault.
That's a deal like emotion.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because I know I've all I guess because knowing
how this this arrangement works from the beginning, I never
felt any ownership for those games. I knew like the
moment I stopped giving you money, they're gone. So I
have no personal attachment to that library. The ones that
I actually paid money for, you know, it's a bit
of a different story. Yeah, all the like hundreds of
PS plus games that I probably have, I'm like them.
I if they went away, I wouldn't be like, oh no,
I'd be like, yeah, I never owned se I didn't
pay for those. I technically paid for them, but not
in the you know, I subscribed to borrow them basically.
Speaker 3: Well and crucially so we were talking about the essential
tier right now, it's just ten bucks a month. Also,
a lot of these have different prices. If you decide
to pay for like every three months or yearly. I
find the monthly price is a better basis. It always
frustrates me when something's like for as little as three
dollars a month and then you click on it. It's
like when you pay annually eighty it if you want
to play monthly, it's twenty thousand dollars a month, which
I say, anyways, we've got an extra which gives you
the game catalog. So this is like their game Pass
equivalent in terms of like you're playing modern games or
what's in their game catalog. This page on the Places
Plus website doesn't have the total number, so I don't
know how much it is. Off the top of my head.
It's like, Okay, this is featuring hundreds of games, so
some amount of hundreds. I feel like it's smaller than
the Xbox Games catalog. I don't have any evidence to
support that. Notably, PlayStation hasn't ever really been like day one,
we're gonna put our big Like Spider Man two didn't
launch on PlayStation Plus, and it would be pretty surprising
if it did. And eventually they'll come to that service
most likely, but it's a different It's much more of
a back catalog you're paying for rather than like staying
up to date so to speak, with the newest releases.
Speaker 1: How long it takes. I've never got a sense of
the time frame between launch and Okay, we'll put our
big first party thing on.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I feel like it's at least a year or so.
Speaker 1: Is it like the CADS is, like this is coming
to PC. It takes as long for it to come
to Extra.
Speaker 3: Maybe a little shorter, but yeah, I don't know. I
think it's also PlayStation really in my mind, at least,
I don't know what they'll like numbers say, really relies
on its first party games, like that's how that's where
a lot of the the value of PlayStation is is.
It's like, well, that's the only place you can play
Got of War, Spider Man, got et cetera.
Speaker 1: Right. I should also clarify that I've only ever been
subscribed to the lowest tier, which used to be the
only tier before that added the two extra tiers and
then and then I got knocked down to the bottom.
But I have never been compelled to pay for the
other two tiers.
Speaker 2: I was on the extra tier for a while when
I was subscribed, because I think that is the one
that does give you access to older games, so being
able to access correct the catalog.
Speaker 1: Right now, just wait, what So.
Speaker 3: There's Essential, then there's Extra, and then there's Premium and Premium.
Speaker 2: Okay, yeah, okay, Premium is the one that has older stuff.
I was on that for a little bit because it
did give me access to but I think they also
changed that at some point or because there were games
that were coming to Extra and Premium, but then there
were ones that were only going to premium.
Speaker 1: It's I mean, the biggest criticism with their tiers is
that it's unnecessarily complicated.
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, they also have Yeah, so the Extra has
like games. It also has Ubisoft Plus Classics, which is interesting.
It's not Ubisoft plus Tubasoft plus Classics, so it's some
of the Ubisoft games. I was on the Extra tier
like two years ago, three years ago maybe now, where
I replayed all the Assassin's Creed games, or at least
a lot of the Assassin's Creed games, and it was
easier for me to pay for PlayStation Plus Extra rather
than to buy the ones that they didn't have. And
then the top and so that's that's fifteen bucks a month,
and then eighteen bucks a month is Playtation Plus Premium,
which includes that classics catalog. Eric was talking about. It
has cloud streaming, so you're basically streaming a lot of
these older games. Am I right that it's PlayStation one, two,
and three games in this library.
Speaker 2: I just saw Arc the lad in there, as well
as ape Escape one, and I see Dark Cloud the
first Dark Cloud as well as Dark Cloud two on
here as well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, as we got the whole spread.
Speaker 3: The whole spread. So yeah, and that's that's one I've
honestly been considering, not seriously considering, thinking about trying out
PlayStation Plus Premium because I have a PlayStation Portal, and
if you pay for Premium, you can do cloud streaming,
and now the portal can do supports streaming from the
cloud as opposed to just remote play from a console,
which is the thing that you think would always be
able to do and I wish I could do without
a subscription, but I don't know that is that is
maybe my most regretful game purchase, like game hardware purchase,
the PlayStation Portal, because I never use it. It doesn't
really I got one maybe a year ago, a little
more than the New Year. I don't know. It's it's
I really liked, you know what it was. I loved
the idea of playing Metaphor Refontasio in bed because my
PlayStation's out in the living room, and that's we were
talking about turn based like tactical stuff. But that's just
one where I'm like, I don't want to have to
always be sitting out here when I play this game.
It's really long. I just want to be able to
play it in as many locations as possible. So I
got the portal, but I just like my WiFi is
like fine, but it's not good enough to support the
like timed button pressing or stuff that you get from
something like that. Just like running around in the open
world that always was hard for me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, anyways, I mean honestly, that speaks to like one
of the reasons I don't feel the need to upgrade
is like cloud streaming is kind of a big it's
not one of the characters. And I've I've I just
don't like cloud streaming at all. Like I don't care
what genre game it is. I just never want to
have to worry about latency. Like my internet's good, but
even then, I just never I the moment I see
any dipper stutter, I'm gonna be like this sucks. I'm
just going to go back to my ansole. It's why
I didn't buy a portals. I was like, this is
the this is emphatical to how I want to play games.
It's like it's built on cloud streaming and I don't
want to handheld, but I can't leave the house with
If I want to do that, I can pull out
my WIU. It's like I've already lived that life.
Speaker 3: My my understanding is that, and I could be wrong,
because I've posted about this a few times. I understanding
is that the cloud streaming and the remote play are
different levels of good, and that cloud streaming has gotten
better over time. Remote play for me, has a lot
more latency. But that's why the thing I haven't tried
the cloud streaming on PlayStation Portal. I guess maybe I'm
still being delusional and I'm like, there's still it'll still
be worth it this purchase that I made.
Speaker 2: I've only I've only tried cloud streaming on two different services.
I tried the Xbox One and it was okay. I
don't remember it being remarkably.
Speaker 3: Good, you know, when you did that out of curiosity, that.
Speaker 2: Would have been like at least three years ago or
so I did. It was it was a while bag
Yeah launched.
Speaker 1: And fine, But I tried. Yeah.
Speaker 2: The other one I tried, which we'll talk about the moment,
is the Switch Cloud stuff, specifically the ones that were
coming out only for Triple A games. I tried to
control Cloud on the switch. Oh my god, crazy four
hardware would.
Speaker 3: Even sell that.
Speaker 2: Instead, the switch that's being lit on fire is thousands
of miles away from you and trying to stream you
the game quietly. It's doing the R two D two
yell yes.
Speaker 3: Uh, anyways, that's that's a PlayStation. It sounds like this
is one that we all are. This is the first one,
and all three of us are currently subscribed to by choice.
But maybe when this podcast ends, Eric will not be
anymore until there's another online.
Speaker 1: We've witnessed the death of a subscription service live on
the air.
Speaker 2: Uh yeah.
Speaker 3: Next up, we'll talk about Nintendo. Nintendo Switch Online, the
weirdest one of these. It does a lot of things
at the same time. Uh, and I I have it.
I have the expansion pack plan.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think we all do, right, I think we
all do.
Speaker 2: That's another one to play to play Path of Radiance,
I think you need it, right Yeah?
Speaker 1: Yeah, well yeah, I think this is another one. Disclosure
that Nintendo provided Game Informer with which well maybe I
don't know, maybe you got it. I know mine.
Speaker 3: Well, I had it and I got it before Nintendo
sent us the code, and it was like, it actually
doesn't work because I paid for a year and you
can't like buy another year and then extend what you had,
like it has to be a lapse account or whatever.
Speaker 1: So yeah, it.
Speaker 3: Just didn't work.
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, I pay for this. I will continue to
pay for this this if I if I only had
to pick, well, if I only had to pick one
gaming subscription that I have, it would be to continue
my final Fantasy fourteen subscription, and then it would be
to keep Switch.
Speaker 1: Sorry to suggest that you you take handouts there, idn't.
Speaker 2: Mean yeah no, if anything, I'm not being offered a handouts.
Speaker 1: Handouts talking about.
Speaker 2: Straps, yeah yeah, gotta pull yourself up by your expansion pack.
Speaker 1: Yeah, get that premium.
Speaker 3: Sid So, uh, Switch online is interesting. It does a
lot of things. It does have online play, so there
are instances where you might want to do that. I
don't know who's like really intense about it. My brother
was like really into playing Smash online for a hot minute,
so he would have it for that. If you're trying
to play that definite online cart world for sure. Yeah, yeah,
you're playing with friends that are distant, et cetera. Others,
there's instances where you would use that and people now
people go to Nintendo platforms four traditionally, but there's definitely
some big games that you could Oh, you're disagreeing with me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I just said Animal Crossing, like that's the reason
to have switch online versus anything else. You got to
have it for that. I would have said, like, yeah,
like four years ago, two great, look, I play a
lot of I think Nintendo's multiplayer offering is is very
good on its doorst party front. Like Mario Kart's Great
Smash doesn't always work, if it ever does, but I
still play it anyways because I'm a broken man. I
would have said Mario Party if not for Lego Party
coming out, But then Lego Party also very fun multiplayer. Uh,
And yeah, like Animal Crossing, being able to go to
your friend's islands, to trade stuff, to do all the
different things you can do with online. When it comes
to that, yeah, you absolutely want it for that, nothing else.
Speaker 3: I guess I didn't consider it for any of those
because those are mostly things I do locally that you
like can't do locally with other consoles so like, if
I'm playing Animal Crossing, I'm trading with like the people
in my household, or like my friends when I see
them in person. I'm doing a lot more local switch stuff.
But that's just me and I hadn't occurred to me
that to me. To me, it's like like a call
of duty. That to me is like there's games that
you could only play online, and you would only play
online that I am playing on like PlayStation. That's That's
what I'm thinking of. I guess to where I was
coming from.
Speaker 2: There was a thing that happened called the COVID nineteen pandemic,
in which we crucially could not visit each other's house
and we're thus not able to trade items in person, and.
Speaker 1: I think that change.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Legitimately, there was a huge boom in online gaming
and discord communities and things like that around the COVID
nineteen pandemic, and largely, like I, I myself have seen
entire communities and friend groups formed around things like playing
Animal Crossing online. So yeah, I think for that reason alone,
it's it's already like a pretty notable thing. I still
don't like it. I'm still not happy about having to
pay to get multiplayer access. I think that's silly.
Speaker 1: This is a percentage of Nintendo Switch Online subscribe. Are
people that signed up during the pandemic and just kept
forgetting to cancel it and every year to get that
like twenty dollars hit in or bank counter like, oh
that thing, God forgot it was paying for that, so
oh I got another year. I gotta keep it.
Speaker 2: Someone listening to the pod right now just had that moment,
got the email, still sub to that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So on that note, Switch Online the price is
it's a lot more affordable than these other ones. It
is a thing where like PlayStation Plus, for example, is
something where at least two of the three of us
were like, I want the online multiplayer, and they're adding
other stuff to it that I have to buy in
order to get the online multiplayer, where maybe you would
love to have like an option where you're paying less
just for multiplayer. Sometimes Switch Online it's twenty dollars for
a whole year. So a year of base Switch Online
is less than one month of Ultimate Game Pass, which
is wild and that gets you online play, that gets
you some of the class library, that gets you SNS
and game Boy, that gets you the Nintendo Music app
on Switch to game chat. We all love it. And
then you can also save data in the cloud. That's
what all those things, which is also huge.
Speaker 1: Yeah, especially atally one of my main reasons for I mean,
outside of just academic reasons, but I do like having
cloud stores is a big deal.
Speaker 2: Yes, Yeah, I like that one a lot because I
think I didn't run into it as often with PlayStation
having to like delete a game and then reload a
game and things like that, But with the Switch, I
was doing it more often than obviously. Moving from my
original switch to my O lead and then from my
O lead to my switch to uh, being able to
pull down all that stuff and just carry everything over
was huge. And again it was for twenty bucks a year,
which is so much less than everything else is asking
right now, even on the metric of just subscription services,
not even counting games, that's so much cheaper than everything
else out there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and that's also I'm talking the individual prices, right.
A lot of people are on a Switch family plan
where you don't need to be family members. You can
link a bunch of accounts. Eight people can share a
family plan account and it's thirty five dollars a year
for eight people, which is I'm sorry, why I wish
you when you clarify that you don't have to be
part of the same family, I wish Nintendo trying to
verify that is that your brother, your mes don't look
similar enough to each other.
Speaker 1: Family supports.
Speaker 2: Nintendo supports found families right even in their plans.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and then there's the Expansion Pack, which is all
the stuff is before, and then add stuff. Notably, we're
talking about Path of Radiance, which is a GameCube game
on the Switch to it adds access to their GameCube
game library on both Switch one and Swich too, adds
this Nintendo sixty four games, game Boy Advance Games, and
then there's a bunch of specific big first party Nintendo games.
I have DLC that's exclusive to Switch on the expansion pack. Sorry,
not exclusive to the expansion pack, but you get it
quote unquote for free with the expansion Pack. So this
is Tiers of the Kingdom and Breath of the Wild.
They both get up to their upgraded Switch to upgrades
Mario cart Eate Deluxe, you get the whole Booster Course Pass,
which is like forty eight more tracks. I might be
making that number up. It's a lot, it's a lot
of more tracks. You get the Animal Crossing, New Horizons,
Happy Home Paradise up DLC, you get this Splatoon two
Octo expansion. And then also they like they separated the
Sega Genesis catalog from all of the Nintendo ones because
they're like, well that's that's not they're not real. But
you know, have to play second Genesis games, specifically with
the expansion pack that is individually fifty dollars a year,
family plan eighty dollars a year. Again, if you're getting
eight people total, then it's ten bucks a year for
all those things. If you have eight people, absolutely the
way to go. You just gotta assuming there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, of course. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I I was paying for a bunch of people. I
was paying for a family plan for Switch one, and
it was a bunch of people that I like, didn't
really talk to, and it was like the third year
and I.
Speaker 1: Was like, a family.
Speaker 3: Wow, Nintendo's yeah, they're checking to see if you've texted them?
Speaker 1: Really, yeah, have.
Speaker 2: You checked in on your family?
Speaker 1: Checked the family plan members.
Speaker 3: I canceled it and I just started paying for an
individual one. I think because I was just like I'm
not gonna keep doing this for people don't care. Also,
I was upgrading to the Expansion Past and I was like,
I don't feel like yeah anyways, yeah, so, uh we
all have the Expansion Pass.
Speaker 1: Uh, I have it.
Speaker 3: I bought for it. I paid for it. Eric, you
paid for it, Marcus, would you be paying for it
if it wasn't provided by Nintendo?
Speaker 1: I have paid for it. Actually, so the first time
I got it was through Nintendo, and then we got
laid off, and then during that year it like autovernude.
So I mean, I guess I didn't pay for it
by choices, but I was like, oh right, I gotta
pay for this now, all right, So like the last
year was on my dime and then we got another
sub through them that said, because the Expansion Pass is
fifty a year, I think, yes, right, Oh, I this
one's harder out of all the like I guess, like
libraries that the subscription all the three subscription services offer,
I was the most bummed or would be the most
bummed to lose Nintendo's I think this is the most
appealing in terms of like, oh, these are all like
classic retro games. Some of them are like Japan or
Japanese releases that are in like available state side for
the first time, so that there's weird little oddities like
that that are interesting for me. And I think, like
I can go without game Pass, but like this one,
I'd be like, oh man, I kind of miss having
those N sixty four games or those S and E
S games. It'd be cool to just and not like
I'm firing those up even often. But I would between
the comparatively cheaper price tag and the more appealing library,
I would keep paying for Switch Line and again cloud Saves.
That's that's big for Switch.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I think if you strip out the quality of life
features and you even just look at the retro catalog,
I really think it's a good retro catalog that Nintendo
has curated. The Sega stuff, especially like you can play
Fantasy Star four on your Switch right now. You can
just boot it up on the Expansion Pass and that
that owns like that's a it's a really hard game
to get like proper access to otherwise, and a lot
of other stuff is on there like that. I think
the N sixty four stuff to your point, uh, like
you can just boot up Pokemon Stadium and play some
mini games and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: Are you kidding me?
Speaker 2: Like, yeah, that sounds great, Like nobody, Okay, let's be
honest with ourselves. How many people are actually booting up
Smash sixty four versus Smash Bro's Ultimate, Like like that's
not happening very often, but you.
Speaker 1: Do the show your kids like we got far we
came from this.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, so yeah, this is what it used to
be and they're like, okay, can we go back to Ultimate?
Now go pick Joker. Yeah. Yeah, it's it is an
impressive offering that they continue to do. I always hit
a point where I'm like, oh, I wish they were
doing more. And then they announced that they're doing GameCube
and not just the GameCube games that you would expect,
but here's Path of Radiance, here's I don't think we
have this. Yeah, but at some point, yeah chib Robo
xd Gale of Darkness is supposed to come to at
some point, which is a crazy cut. Like it's almost
like Nintendo went to the list of the highest priced
GameCube games and said, we're going to put these on
the surface. You know, We're just will really help the
people out.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like that's a switch to on or to GameCube
library only like solidifies like I'm not getting rid of
us because I never had a GameCube and I have
gone back over the years and played some of the
big stuff from GameCube like Sunshine and Win Waker, but
there's stuff that I'm like, man, I'm counting down todays
until they can somehow make Eternal Darkness happen. I've always
wanted to play that.
Speaker 2: It'd be so sick, that'd so awesome.
Speaker 1: You're like, now you're saying it's possible we can get
this on like modern platforms because of this library. Well,
I got to keep it for that day.
Speaker 2: To come get custom Robo on there. I mean doing
the Krados mean like put custom Robo on my Switch
to Nintendo. Yeah, it's I I genuinely am surprised for
a company that I do think usually struggles with how
it packages it's retro nostalgia and things like that. Nintendo
Switch Online is like totally worth it to me. And
I think if I could only pick one service out
of these to keep, and granted I am a switch
to user, like I use my switch to a lot
if you don't use your switch a lot. So yeah,
these platforms really just end up being for the power
users of their respective platforms, right like Xbox game Pass.
If you own an Xbox, if all you play is
games on Xbox, you're gonna want Xbox Game Pass. But
if you're like me and you only play stuff on
PC or Switch, granted, game Pass is also on PC,
but take PlayStation. If you really only play on PlayStation,
then Plus is going to be a magnitude higher of
importance for you. But I think when it comes to Switch,
I do think the offerings they give are both in
quality of life and what they add to the games
that you either already own or will own, because if
you buy Nintendo console, you're buying Nintendo games. That's kind
of how it's always gone. They do offer a lot
in that respect, and I think it really has made
that service feel like a standout for me compared to
the other two.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I do think it's an interesting like there's an
extent of like if I own a PlayStation and you could,
I can understand not having placers and plus if you're
not playing online all that much, there is there is
an extent to which I feel like if you have
a Switch or Switch to especially you don't have the
Switch online, it kind of feels like you're not getting
the most out of the console. Like I feel like
the retro offerings are like a big draw for a
lot of like a wide audience of people.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I wonder how much that is, how much true
it is for younger.
Speaker 3: Definitely not.
Speaker 1: I'm always curious about that.
Speaker 2: I think it's nostalgia driven for sure.
Speaker 3: I was I was gonna bring that up of like,
like Eric mentioned, and I know you weren't saying everyone
in the world's playing this game. You mentioned Fantasy Star.
Speaker 2: What for, Hey, everybody in the world should be playing
Fantasy Star for it, like we are, just we'd be
a better world for it. Just the thing that like
I do see that, like if like I'm always someone
that's liked going back and being like, oh, these are
games that came out before my time, before I was born,
in the older era whatever. I think there is a
type of person that's interested in that.
Speaker 3: I also think there's a lot of like kids or
younger people that would play a switch and would not
see the appeal necessarily of some of these older games.
But also like kids aren't really subscribing to stuff a
lot of the time it's it's I feel like a
lot more specific instances where maybe if it was a
family plan, I guess a kid might have access to it,
but they would want it more for other stuff.
Speaker 2: I would guess if they're busy playing roadblocks. Let's be
honest with ourselves, they're.
Speaker 3: Busy playing roadblocks. Okay, at game at this point, that's
that's that's a take that's too hot for us to
do a single second half wild, You're kind of something
the I'm gonna do a bit of a rundown of
like some other platform other subscription services I know of
that I don't necessarily know if we're paying for, but
I do want to just at the end go around
and just say, like other other gaming like regular expenses
that you pay for, whether you think they're worth it
or you feel like you're getting ripped off, but it's
like I gotta, you know, the kind of thing of
like I need to pay for it to play online
or whatever. Apple Arcade is something I think I have.
I think you can buy it, and it like shares
with like your family plan on Apple. It's not something
I use all that often, but it's something that I
used a lot. I really actually that's not true. I
love Grindstone. I play Grinds on Apple Arcade all the time.
But that's if you got an Apple product iPhone, iPad.
You got a lot of really good mobile games on there.
And it is a really nice, like modern version of
There's a lot of like like Fruit Ninja Plus or
something where it's a game that existed for free as
a kid, for me as a kid, existed for free,
you know, a decade fifteen years ago, whenever it was
that you could pay to remove ads, you could pay
for like an upgraded version, or a lot of games
that were just have become laden with ads. The nice
thing about Apple Arcade is it's like, this is the
mobile game experience without the ads. It feels a lot
less predatory. It feels like it's actually a game that
you're supposed to play and enjoy. So I recommend it.
I have it right now. I'm not a huge mobile
gamer at the moment, but there's definitely periods of my
life where I'm like, I couldn't imagine going without it.
There's also EA Play, which I've actually never heard of
someone just subscribing to EA Play. I'm sure there are
p person doesn't exist EA Play and like Ubisoft Plus
are two examples of services that I'm like. They exist.
You can pay for the monthly, they get you a
very specific selection of games. I don't know who's paying
for it. That is like like if you're such a
diehard EA fan but you don't have the games that
they would offer, or like.
Speaker 1: I think if you subscribe to Ubisoft Plus, the only
people on your friends lift are just members of the
gumb family.
Speaker 2: Yeah this is you. Please comment below, Please please say
yeah of experience, every leave out, no detail. We we
need to understand you better, we need to study you scientifically.
Speaker 1: I think if I had to guess, you're either on
the EASA like a hardcore like I play Apex Legends
or something like that, or or like Madden or for Ubisoft,
like man, I'm really into Rabo six Siege or like that.
You know, but do you even need those services? The
playoff games, so you know, that's a lot.
Speaker 3: That's what's funny is it's not like they haven't built
their model so like UBI. So Ubisoft has classics and
premium Classics is an evolving selection. This is of games
on PC. I wonder if it is PC specific and
then standard editions and you get twenty percent discount on
games included in your plan. So I guess if you're
paying to like own a game that's in the subscription,
it's twenty percent off, which I think is a think
game Pass does, which is nice, I guess, but kind
of defeats the purpose of I don't know.
Speaker 2: These feel like services that somebody forgot to turn off
because they were like, well, yeah, yeah, you know, every
once in a while, some money trickles in from that faucet,
So why turn you know off, we.
Speaker 1: Don't need to. It's like just leading open is in
a break room and employee walks in and he's like, oh, hey,
what do you do here? And he's like, oh, I'm
in charge of Ubisoft Plus. And he's just like like
makes a mental note to shut that down and fire
that person. Like you're gonna say.
Speaker 3: They're like, dude, we just closed a different studio.
Speaker 1: I totally forgot. We could have destroyed the surface.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: No, whoever you are that works on that, you deserve
to keep your job, yes, order to be transferred to else.
I don't I don't want to make jokes about laying
people off because I literally wrote up a layof story
about you was.
Speaker 1: Off today, we have been laid off. We know what
it's like. We're talking.
Speaker 3: Yeah, anyways, the premium is eighteen dollars a month and
includes day one releases of hot new Ubisoft games, which
again is a thing like you know, you know you
you know, you know, how you take. I was gonna say, uh,
I was gonna say just Dance, but I do think
Just Dance has transitioned into a live service model.
Speaker 2: Live service model, yeah, take access to the Assassin's Creed
Shadows came out last year.
Speaker 1: It did come out.
Speaker 3: I mean, there's Star Wars, Outlaws, Avatar, Frontiers of Pandora,
Like there are games.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of people playing that Avatar game right now. Yeah,
but it's also the new movie and they're like, we
got to play some some Avatar a person now.
Speaker 3: But but it's like, did you need to pay eighteen
dollars a month to maybe?
Speaker 2: Probably not?
Speaker 3: No, now, just talking about other subscriptions we pay for. Personally,
I'm curious of the things people mentioned, the comments of
if you pay for EA play pluss, just in general,
things that you pay for what you think is worth it,
or used to be worth it. It isn't anymore or
vice versa. It's not a video game per se.
Speaker 2: But I did want to.
Speaker 3: Say I do subscribe to the d D Beyond Master
Tier Dungeons and Dragons Online tool set. It is just
easier and a lot of aspect, especially when I'm teaching
newer people how to play, to just be like, here
is a service. You click the buttons instead of having
to read and understand what to write in what box.
I appreciate that it streamlines it a lot. And the
Master Tier I can like share the content that I
bought or own digitally. I can share that with everyone
else in my campaign. So if someone wants like a
subclass or a weird book they don't have, then they
don't have to go buy it themselves. So I have
the Master Tier. I think the Hero Tier is cheaper.
It's like six dollars a month or something like that.
I should know exactly. Yeah, six dollars plus tax, which
is pretty good. It's not that expensive. You still have
to bay for all the books and stuff, which is
what sucks. But once you own them, I'm just paying
to share them, which is fine. And that's really the
only thing top of my head every time lately. The
reason I came up with this is I'll be like, oh, shoot,
I am still paying for that thing. I don't want
to be paying for that, and then I forget to
cancel it. What about you, guys, what are the subscription
this Gull's be like a battle pass or you know,
an MMO subscription, just things you're paying for regularly in
your your gaming life.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mentioned before, I still pay for Final Fantasy fourteen.
I started playing it in COVID. Actually it was around
the time that n Walker dropped, if I remember, because
I was trying to sneak onto the servers to play
a Realm Raborn while the fifth X wait Heavens words
is yeah, I guess technically fourth, but fifth like expansion
was out for a video game and everybody was logging
on to play it, and I was like, I'm playing
Realm Reborn and fighting the cues for that, but I
subed to it. I've kept my sub the entire time.
I haven't let it labs. I've been paying for it
myself the entire time, mostly because I really like just
being able to log on and play whenever I want to,
and also like I play a lot of different aspects
of that game. So Triple Triad is on there, gathering, hunting,
stuff like that is all on there, and it's like
a very relaxing game for me. It's like a very
soothing game, especially because it has different stuff that you
can do that's not just going to do raids and
things like that. It's kind of what I boot up
when I don't really know what I want to play.
I just want to like poke away at something or
take something off a checklist or whatever. And I just
I love fourteen. It's such a good game. I can't
recommend it enough. The free trial is fantastic. I won't
do the whole meme the sales pitch, but other stuff
I used to I mean I used to spend a
lot more money when it came to things like cosmetics
in games that I played, so do to two League
of Legends stuff like that. I would buy skins and
that wasn't necessarily buying the like Now they do have
battle passes alongside the skins that they sell, and usually
in a game, what I will do is if a
game has something in a battle pass that I want,
I like that. Games are doing this now they will
let you earn progress on the Battle Pass, and then
once you hit the like you can hit the level
that you would get it at, and then you buy
the Battle Pass, you get everything that you would have
unlocked if you had been a Premium member in that time.
And I know that that's kind of a carrot and
stick situation, but I like it because it means that
I can play a game and it lets me kind
of meeter myself to say, Okay, if I really would
have put in the time an investment to get the thing,
if it really mattered that much to me, then I
can get there and buy the pass when I want it,
get the skin, feel good about myself, move on with
my life. Or like, if I never got there, then
it really didn't matter that much to me at the
end of the day, and I can just move on
and not have spent the money. So I've bought like
a Fortnite Pass or two here or there. I don't
think I've bought a Legal Legends Pass yet, but the
new season was kind of tempting me. But again, I'm
waiting to see if I actually get there or not.
I almost did that with the Dot to two pass
over the holidays. Then I was like, once I got
the base levels of the sets, I was like, I
don't really want any more of these, so I'm not
gonna pay money for them, And that was I like
that method. It feels like a good balance of like
I don't love battle passes, but at least now there's
a better way to meter it out for myself to
where I don't feel like I'm then like dedicating myself
to getting my money's worth out of it after I've
bought it.
Speaker 3: So yeah, I like that a lot. I think I
think there is a an element where they're they're trying
to use fomo of like, well, if you had the
battle pass, you'd have unlocked all these things. But I
really like the way you are using like that that
mindset of it, of like I'll buy it when I
get to the thing that I actually want, which I
think is totally valid.
Speaker 2: And then if I didn't get there, I didn't really
want it that bad. Like that happened with the Simpsons
Fortnite season where I was like, Oh, this battle pass
is so sick. There's all these Simpsons characters in it,
and then I didn't get very far in the battle
pass that season, and I was like, oh, well, it
would be cool to have that stuff available to me,
But I guess it really didn't matter if I didn't
feel the need to grind for it, whereas I felt
the need to grind for other stuff in other games before.
But it does end up meaning that I spend less
money overall because I'm not feeling that need to do
that stuff.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I have. I have in the past paid for
Fortnite Crew when I was playing that game really regularly,
and I have paid for I bought a few Marvel
Rivals Battle passes, but I have I haven't been playing
that game as intensely as I was like a year ago.
But yeah, but what about you, Marcus, Yeah.
Speaker 1: I'm pretty straightforward. I really only pay for like the
three console maker subscriptions so like game pass ps plus
Nintendo Online, regardless of whether or not they are provided
to me by the console maker. I was paying for
them before that, and a lot of it. Again, do job.
Like I mentioned before, it is a great excuse to
be like, well, I mean, you know, I might have
to play something online. It's just good to I always
have this going even though I'm not, like I'm not
the biggest online multiplayer guy, especially a competitive multiplayer like
if I do play online, it's like in a cooperative sense,
like oh me and my body are gonna run through
this game together. So and then even then it's like
the lowest Well, I guess that's not true either, Like
for PlayStation it's the lowest tier, like the essential tier.
I have no desire to upgrade above it. Nintendo I
paid for an expansion pack where I would because I
want that full library, and it's also it's still cheaper,
a lot cheaper than a lot of other annual subs.
And then for game Pass, if I was not, if
it had not been paid for me by Microsoft, I
would probably bump it down a tier or two just
because it's like, well, I don't need access to the
full libraries. I don't assess it that much again because
of just my gaming habits as a result of this job,
but I do, like I just need to have access
to online, like I need to be able to play
online in my Xbox, so I can do that with
like the lowest tier. Other than that, I don't I
have an Android, so I don't have Apple Arcade or
Apple anything. I Since I don't play competitive multiplayer games,
I don't do battle pass stuff. Ever. The only live
game I keep up with is Yu gi Oh Masterdool
and then as soon to be four years since that
game's been out, I have paid real money twice. Like
that game is actually quite good about if you play
often enough, you will earn the the in game currency
just through playing, to where like I've just used every
gym that I've earned to buy the in game battle
pass has just been earned in game, and there's only
been two instances that I was like, oh, I need
more gyms to get these cars that I really want,
and I don't want to open pack for them, so
I'll give them like five bucks. And I kind of
treated like a tip of like, well, I've been playing
like three years with this game for free. I think
I can afford to give them five bucks. And Fortnite,
I have paid money for Fortnite someone that I don't.
I play Fortnite super infrequently. It's like once in a
blue man where like either friends are like, hey, we're
all getting in, do you want to play? And I'm
like sure, like if I'm invited, or if it's like
in a case of the Simpsons, event are like okay,
that's too cool for me to ignore, because that's that's
like a specific interest or like thing that I like.
Like the dragon Ball thing was the other instance, were like,
I gotta get there. I love dragon Ball. And then
I bought the only skins I've ever bought in Fortnite,
because I've never bought a battle pack. I don't play
like that, but I bought like a Spider Man skin
a couple of years ago. And then I bought the
K Pop Demon Hunter's pack.
Speaker 2: Oh okay, yeah.
Speaker 1: Because my my girlfriend who also is like obsessed with
K Pop Demon Hunters but has never played Fortnite, I
told her, like, they're in the game, wouldn't it be
fun if we, like, like, as an excuse to play Fortnite,
just play at the K Pop Demon Hunters. And then
it was right when the Simpsons event started, so we
got the double whammye of like, oh Simpsons, and we're
both like, I'm roomy and you're the other one, the
other one.
Speaker 3: Do you play.
Speaker 1: I or at least I did in that one in
our matches, I don't care about I'll be any of them.
Think she picked Zoe the Rapper, Yes, yeah, Zoe yea.
So I was like I'll be Wait, what's the other
one's name again?
Speaker 2: Mira, Yeah, Mira. Okay, Look I've seen this movie twice
of my own volition and three more times not of
my own volition, so I know more.
Speaker 1: About this movie. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, see, I've only
seen it once. I'm a fake gamer boy.
Speaker 3: You're not cut up on the lore for Fortnite?
Speaker 1: Yeah, sorry, I'm on the springfield. I was like, oh, yeah,
I know that I'm Simpsons fan, but yeah, that is
to say, like, yeah, I don't really do battle passes.
I just because I know myself well enough, Like I
don't play in multiplayer games like that, even ones that
I like stick with for like a period of time,
Like when Halo Infinite came out, I was playing that
with friends online pretty regularly, but I still know its like, well,
the free battle passes enough for like my pace, Like
I would even finish the free battle pass, so why
would I think I would finish the pay.
Speaker 2: Halo Infinite had the best battle pass system. It is
legitimately like the best system I've ever seen where you
just pick your pass. I think hell Divers actually does
this too, where you do have to buy into the pass,
but then you just gain progress on whatever pass you
have opted into. It's not they have seasonal ones they add,
but then you can go back and choose other passes
and build up through those, And I think that model
is the best model. It completely does a way like
That's the major thing I don't like about Fortnite is
that there's so much FOMO baked into it, and same
with other games like Legal Legends does the same thing.
Or they move things into legacy stuff that you then
have to find other avenues through their monetization system to
get that stuff out. And I like that those games
were just like, hey, we're gonna give you a pass
and you just get progress when you play the game.
You get capital p progress on anything you want whenever
you have chosen that you want as as your progression track,
and god, it made me like those games more like
outside their actual games themselves, I enjoyed being in their
ecosystems more than I enjoy being in the ecosystem of
something like a Fortnite.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, that's it. That's that's solid throw money
yet Yeah.
Speaker 3: I think my main takeaways from this is, uh, there's
there's not a lot. We're super enthusiastic about paying for
Maybe I'm projecting on this who here.
Speaker 2: Is excited to spend money exactly exactly I mean, I
would say, you're you're enthusiastic about like Nintendo Switch online,
for example, where it's a thing where it's like the
it feels like it's worth the cost of the thing.
Speaker 3: But I think, in a lot of instances a thing
that's interesting. And I know that this is all on purpose,
But like in a lot of instances, if I could
pick the things I want and get rid of the
stuff I don't want and just pay for like the
specific stuff I'm actually there for, I would I would
feel more respected. Not that they're trying to respect me,
they're just trying to get my money, and I know that,
but I uh, for example, like Ninten Switch thing, I
would have loved to just buy fire and lom Path
of Radiance. I don't love the idea that one day
they'll take it down, or my subscription might lapse, or
there'll be a new new console that's not compatible with
the Switch stuff, and then you know, I have to
buy it a new time, or there's a new subscription
or whatever. So I don't love the way of it,
and I I'm going to try to be more I
think proactive about canceling stuff. And I don't need it,
but it is just an interesting and interesting state of
the world of gaming right now. There's a lot of
ways to spend money, and it's easy to lose track
of the ways you are. If you're like a serious, dedicated.
Speaker 1: Gamer, yes please, I think it's always important to take
a hard look at yourself. Check your budget every month.
I have aver for it. Monthly, I will review my
subs and go, like, what do I actually need? Am
I using Netflix right now? I'm I using that. I'm
gonna cut it all right, be honest with yourself when
it comes to this stuff, because gaming is already an
expensive hobby without the subside to it. So like, you know,
keep as much money in your pocket as you can,
and remember these companies don't respect you, like no respect
for you.
Speaker 3: I'm rock song about gaming subscriptions.
Speaker 2: That is, I will say, like, that's the reason one
of the reasons why I've kept my fourteen sub is
I feel like that's at least very upfront and honest
of saying you pay us for the expansions because we
spend a lot of dev time making the expansions, and
then you pay us a monthly fee because there's a
ton of work and keeping an MMO up and running
an updated throughout the year. That is the money you
have to spend to play our game. That is the
deal we are making that, you know. Whereas other things
obfuscate so much, they put so much behind tiers, behind
feeling like oh I'm getting this, but I could be
getting a better value here, I could be doing something else.
I really do enjoy it more when it's just like,
here's the transaction we are making. We are a business.
You are the consumer. Would you like this?
Speaker 1: Yes? Or no?
Speaker 2: And I feel much more comfortable making that value exchange
than playing the whole like, well, am I getting my
money's worth out of this that I have to do
with other things?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Well awesome. Thank you Charles for that, for that
discussion and topic, it was awesome, And thank you for
listening to the Game and Former show. We will be
back next week with a new episode once again. GameInformer
dot com slash subscribe get yourself a Game of Former
magazine subscription. It's the number one way to support Game Informer.
I believe if you subscribe now. You can still get
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well an extra thick issue of the magazine. You can
also find it right now on newsstands and bookstores Barns
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places abroad. Still rolling out overseas. Still don't know exactly
which stores, like which exact stores in each country they
are in yet. We're sort of like learning that information
just anecdotically, but we will update you once we get
kind of like a confirmed list of like here is
the store in that in that the magazine will be
up here in in this specific country. But we have
been seeing them mount in the wild in different parts
of the world, which has been cool. Switch stock or
Twitch follows some Twitch. We've got two weekly streams. We
have a Wednesday stream usually streaming the latest and greatest releases,
and every Friday we have our super replay series. Last week,
Charles and I embarked on a new super replay series,
playing the entirety of Sonic in the Black Night, and
dare I say We're probably gonna finish the game this
week because it's really short.
Speaker 3: I didn't realize how short it was. I think I
think there's a and I'm might be making this up.
I think there's a semblance of a new game plus
or there's ways to go back and really, you know,
unlock all this stuff. So maybe if I'm like, if
we finish it, and I'm like, this wouldn't be that
hard one hundred percent, maybe we do like a third
episode or something.
Speaker 1: I don't know, but yeah, just keep.
Speaker 2: Saying it over and over again, get new stuff.
Speaker 1: That's what it's called super replay. Just keep playing the same.
Speaker 3: Honestly, the game is as good as I remembered, which
is to say I've I remember thinking it was janky
and weirdly hard, but thinking it was so cool, And honestly,
I'm still like, this game has sauce. Man, I keep
all the aesthetic decisions. I'm such a big fan of
It's so weird and I love it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, as a passenger that this is their first real
exposure to this, I'm like, man, this is this looks awful,
but I love it.
Speaker 2: I'm so glad I'm not playing this video game myself.
Speaker 1: It's fun. He has a sword. You guys are allergic
talk joy and fantasy. You didn't want me talking so
like a snburn.
Speaker 3: Has eyes and a British accent, of course.
Speaker 1: Of course, whether or not he's a knave. Yeah, yeah,
that's what you want, right.
Speaker 2: Eric, Yeah, yeah, you got Grimore vice from near but
it's a sword now and it's talking the Hedgehog.
Speaker 1: Yeah okay, kind of is actually yeah crazy, so yeah,
tune in. It's Friday for what could very well be
the conclusion of Oursanic and a Black Knight Secret Replay,
our secret replay, Super Replay. We should start that series
secret we started.
Speaker 3: We don't tell people when we start streaming.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we get no viewers.
Speaker 1: It's the valves deadlock of super Replay.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, unlisted YouTube links.
Speaker 3: I guess the characters.
Speaker 2: This is a bit that could evolve. We could do
something with this.
Speaker 1: You can follow us on social media. I'm at Marcus
Stewart seven, Charles is at Chuck Duck three sixty five.
Eric is at c Muci and yeah, visit gameforma dot com,
subscribe to our YouTube channel, share, spread to all the
podcasts on all your podcasts websites. All that stuff helps
us out a lot, and we appreciate it. Yes, we
will see you next week with another episode of the
Game and Former Show. Until then, hope you have a
wonderful weekend. Bye.