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