Speaker 1: Welcome back, everybody to the Game Informer Show, a weekly
podcast covering.
Speaker 2: The video game industry.
Speaker 1: Join us every Friday for discussion with the latest gaming news, reviews,
and exclusive reveals, alongside Game Informer staff and special guests
from around the industry. I'm one of your hosts today
Alex van Aiken, and today I'm joined by Marcus Stewart.
Speaker 2: How are you?
Speaker 3: I'm doing good? I at the time they were recording,
I heard the fans all having a good time last
week talking about my headphones, and.
Speaker 1: I want to let you you gots whatt the UFO
three thousands on right?
Speaker 3: Yeah, which I was told they look beautiful. And then
it comes to find out a bunch of little group
a of smart asses down there fun. But this is
the last time you'll see these because as we're recording,
there's new headphones literally coming into mail.
Speaker 1: All right, we'll hold you do it. We're also joined
by Charles Hart.
Speaker 2: How you doing, Charles? Marcus? Headphones kind of look like
if the Tom and Jerry.
Speaker 4: Tom was wearing headphones and Jerry pulled down head hard
and then Tom had to put the headphones back on.
But there was a big head shaped lump in them.
If you're an a your listener, that's kind of what
it looks like I thought.
Speaker 3: You're going to do. I thought you're gonna go the
other way. If like it looks like I got someone
hit me in the head while wearing them and a
little bump, just push, there's.
Speaker 2: A lot of way the headphones with a hammer on
the head. Yeah, definitely. Also I'm doing well.
Speaker 1: Hello, welcome rounding out the show today, Eric van Allen, Hello.
Speaker 2: Hi, join us later for the Viking funeral for Marcus's headphones.
We're gonna set them adrift on the ocean. I think
they'll flow. They've got so much they do.
Speaker 3: What they do look buoyant for people wondering. My headphones
broke like two weeks ago, and because I'm like a
cheap bastard and I tend to wear things until they
like explode, basically like, I wasn't in a rush to
replace them, but they kept getting worse and then I
had to tape the sides. But you can see there
they're really really struggling to hold on there. For audio listeners,
you'll have to go to the YouTube version to see that.
But like I said, they're literally just like this is
it for them. This is the last time you'll see these,
so like I think, you know, enjoy it while last,
let's hold a nice eulogy for them right now because
their replacements are literally here are going to be here
very soon.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you'll have the last laugh.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is where you or Eric have to edit,
like a compilation of g I clips where I wore
these like all the best moments.
Speaker 2: You know, some Sarah McLaughlin like playing in the background.
Speaker 3: I would like that. Actually, yes, please do that.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, welcome to the Game Informer Show. Everyone, It's
going to be a great episode. You got a lot
to talk about Nintendo direct reactions. Charles played several new
Nintendo games and partner games coming to the console soon.
I'm going to be talking about I flew out the
Blizzard and played the new Overwatch update. What is really
feels like an overhaul? And then Charles you played Mugenics.
And then we'll round up the show with Marcus's thoughts
on Neo three so far.
Speaker 2: But before all that, I do just.
Speaker 1: Want to say, if you're a listener of the show
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And yeah, we really appreciate it. Thanks for giving us
your ears this week, and I guess we'll get into it. Eric,
you wrote up a great article that people can check
out on Gaminformer dot com that was everything announced at
the February Nintendo Direct Partner showcase. Of course, there are
you know what two dozen announcements or so, maybe maybe
not quite that much, but a fair amount trailers. That
is not all announcements, you know, we got updates on
games we've note about, but there were a couple of
new things. And rather than you know, folks can go
and read that whole article and see all the trailers
and stuff. But I thought we'd each pick out, you know,
one of our highlights from that direct and chat about it.
Speaker 2: Do you want to kick us off, Eric?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like you said, I think it was mostly a
lot of things we either knew about or you could
maybe suss out was going to happen. You know, Final
Fantasy seven remake just came to switch to makes sense
that rebirth would be right around the corner, is Sheldough.
I think that's a bit sooner than most of us
thought it would be for me personally.
Speaker 3: Though.
Speaker 2: The standout came second in the direct, second top billing
a little game I don't know if you'all heard of
it called paranorma site. This one's called The Mermaid's Curse.
It's coming out in two weeks and that's wild. Yeah,
I was saying before the podcast started, if you told
me that Square Nix was announcing a new game, and
I had to pick what I thought it was. I
would get probably about fifty deep before I thought that
there was a new Paranormou site coming, and that's not
you know, a commentary on the quality of Paranorma site.
I love that first game. I think it's a really
really incredible adventure horror game. It's just such a weird
thing and such a niche person, you know, you'd think
niche thing that you maybe would imagine that screen. Nick woulday, Okay,
we're going to do one and we'll move on from it.
There were a lot of games kind of in that
window that kind of got one offs Your Harvest Stella's,
your do Field Chronicles, your Project Triangle strategies, that got
one game and then kind of moved on from So
to see Paranorma site get another entry and what looks
like an anthological series, kind of a Dark Pictures type setup.
Very excited for this. The first game was a It's
set around a battle royale that happens at night and
in a small city in Japan, where different people are
kind of granted cursed objects that give them power and
they have to try to eliminate each other in order
to be the one left standing, and they can bring
a loved one back from the dead. Is the legend.
Damn that sounds cool. It's very good.
Speaker 4: Mentioned this game on the podcast before, and I added
it to my Steam wish list like while.
Speaker 2: We were recording. So the fact that now.
Speaker 4: Like a few months after I've learned about the first game,
they're making a second, I'm.
Speaker 2: Like, oh, yeah, came out. The first one came out
in twenty March twenty twenty three.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know there's a big content update back in October.
Speaker 2: But maybe maybe we would have talked.
Speaker 1: About I don't know, but yeah, I remember, I remember
back when this I think you were talking about it
around Godie that time of year in twenty twenty three.
How like, I don't know if it made your list
or not, but you were considered, it.
Speaker 2: Was, it was on my it was on my list
back then. I was not a lot of game and
former at that time, but.
Speaker 3: Twenty twenty three was an amazing year, so that's a lot.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's it's a really really fascinating game. I
think if you like adventure stuff games and not just
your Phoenix rights your don Gan rampas your zero scapes,
but also things like the Seventh Guest, some very throwback
kind of point and click horror. This nails a lot
of that, and it looks like from what we saw
on the trailer, they've got some really cool additional things.
They always have very finicky little mechanics kind of puzzle
boxes to figure out. The game plays with perspective in
really interesting ways. I don't want to say too much
to give away too much, because there's some really great
twists that the game throws at you. The first paranormicite,
I think within the first hour pull some really great tricks.
But one of my favorite things is that it is
a first person adventure game point and click, and you
will often be placed in kind of three sixty diramas
that you have to basically like if you're sitting in
a swivel chair like I am right now, you can
kind of pivot left and right, but you do it
very slowly, and so if you're sure, there's some great
moments with that, if you're like, there's there might be
something just behind me, have to slowly turn. And I
saw in the trailer and I used it as lead
image for the new story that I wrote for GI
this morning. But they had a little mirror that you
could hold up to like look behind you, and the
character was like slowly rotating with the mirror held up,
and I was like, that's that's going to be so good.
That's going to be fantastic. It is a series that
does some really cool stuff, and if you especially like
the zero Escape thing, playing with like meta textual or
like even blueprints, like high level outside the narrative, fourth
wall breaking stuff, it also does some of that. So
I would highly recommend that if any of that sounds good.
I genuinely think that Paranorma site, the first one is
one of Square Enix's like cult classic underappreciated gems. So
to see it get a second game, I'm thrilled. I
cannot wait. And it's only two weeks away, February nineteenth,
I believe. Yeah, yeah, was was the release date, and
it's on Switch and Switch to it looks like and
other platforms. Maybe I don't know if there's been a
press release yet. Ter Yeah, yeah, that makes sense, sounds great. Yeah,
check that out. Paranormal site make time cool? Great?
Speaker 1: Charles, what about you? What do you have a standout
from from the direct.
Speaker 2: Can I take yours? Because my answer is, yeah, let's
both talk about it.
Speaker 1: Let's both we talked before the show what we were
You were actually gonna pick that one.
Speaker 2: We'll do a co op pick.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, Alex and I both both liked Orbitals. I mean,
so my real answer is that like, nothing, nothing you
really jumped out at me. I was doing something else
at the time. I was doing an interview. But none
of these are making me like super excited.
Speaker 2: Did did you watch the orbital?
Speaker 3: Do you have it?
Speaker 2: I know you're busy.
Speaker 1: Did you have a chance to watch the trailer for Orbitals?
I thought, because yeah, it was the first amountment, Like,
there are a lot of there are a lot more
mechanics and systems that were shown off that look awesome.
Number one, Uh just really really reminding me a lot
of like in terms of like the places that you're
visiting and the setting reminds me a bit of Citizen
Sleeper with some of the and I guess it's more
you know, there's more of that in kind of dystopian
sci fi, but like the you know, the big plant
harvesters and like going and and shooting water on platforms
to make giant you know, fauna shootout.
Speaker 2: So you can use them the platform.
Speaker 1: I know, there's something about there's a very I love
like seeing weird nature in sci fi. Maybe that's more
so what I'm talking about is like I want to
see the the you know, the propagated flora and fauna
that that they've been farming on a space station. Like
that stuff is always super cool to me. And that's
what I think. That's what reminds me a lot about
Citizens Sleeper, the first one, especially the the you know,
towards the end of that game, you kind of see
some of that stuff, and I just think that's such a.
Speaker 2: Fun thing to explore.
Speaker 1: But there's a lot of different mechanics shown off, not
just that, but you know there looks like you can
play the music and play drums as well. For people
who'd missed us talking about this what a month ago
or so at the start of the year, Orbitals is
think think like a haze light game such as like
It Takes Two or split Fiction. It's that kind of
game where it is a split screen game, but personal
left and the right are you know, there are two
different perspectives being rendered and you're kind of going on
separate paths, not necessarily just staying together, and each of
you are kind of like one half of a coin
that is needed to solve puzzles, and this is Orbitals
is like that, but it is pulling from like nineties
early two thousand's anime and it looks incredible. It's from
Kepler Interactive. They're publishing it. I think the game's being
developed in Tokyo, I believe by shape Form, and it's
we got news that they're targeting a summer twenty twenty
six window, and I'm personally excited even more because I
have this game drafted on our fantasy league.
Speaker 4: Eric and I aren Do you guys ever feel like
it's unethical to participate.
Speaker 2: In fantasy leagues? As No, there's nothing at stake, It's
it's mostly just us having fun, and like, what's just fun?
I find it really interesting because we end up in
situations where you're kind of trying to stay ahead of time.
How do I think this game is going to turn out?
Versus how does it turn out? And I'll also say
that I regularly forget that I'm in a fantasy league
and then log in after three months and go like
oh crap, I'm loosen. I will say.
Speaker 4: The other thing about Orbitals that I did internalize is
it has game share, which I'm very excited about.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because I'm game share with older Switch systems too,
I believe.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So I'm really excited because I'm definitely gonna be
playing this with my fiance. But I like the idea
that like I could have it on the TV and
she could do a handheld or vice versa or something,
or we could just both be somewhere where there's not
a TV and just yeah, that's it's a nice game
pad exactly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, just hanging out right there, right behind something.
Speaker 3: I see it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, let's go. Uh well yeah, Orbitals looks great. Marcus.
What about you?
Speaker 1: What was your your highlight from from this direct?
Speaker 3: I have, like, I guess, like one main highlight and
a couple of sort of just like huh, like that's
that's interesting picks. My main one is Adventures of Elliott.
The Adventures of Elliott the Millennium Tails getting a June
eighteenth release date. This was announced last year. This is
sort of the the Square Inox, kind of like HD
two d Zelda. I guess for lack of a better comparison,
Like it's like the first time we've seen the HD
two D stuf I'll apply to a genre that wasn't
a turn based RPG or strategy game where you're just this,
uh the Elliott, cool little red hat wearing guy going
around cutting things down with a sword and a shield.
Like it's got very kind of like old school Zelda vibe,
but in that like really cool art direction. I know
there's been a demo out for it on Switch for
the longest time, and I still have never played it.
I think I still have it's demo. It's good. Yeah,
I need to, but I love every time I see
the game pop up, I'm like, yeah, this looks like
I love me some like Zelda or like Zelda likes,
and you know, combining with the HG two D style,
I'm like super pumped for this. And summer good a
good month for that. I like to think I'm trying
to like because it's just after SGF and that feels
like like a good sort of like recovering from the
madness of SGF game. Like, all right, I'm gonna sit
down on my Switch and I'm just gonna play. I'm
just gonna cut some things down and adventures of that. Yeah,
so that's nice. And then kind of my quick hits
are the Super Bomber Ran Collection, which is like a
complete surprise as far as I know, I don't think
this was announced beforehand, but it's out today shadow Drop,
and it is like a retro collection of like all
the old school Bomberman games as well as I think
two that never came to the West. Interesting and it
includes like you know, local and online multiplayer. They added
a boss rush mode, so like it's been a long time,
so I've really gotten into bomber bangs. I think a
lot of kind of like like the more contemporary Bombermans
haven't really done it. You know.
Speaker 4: I played one Bomberman game and I famously did not
like it.
Speaker 3: Right, I remember the madness of the at least of
the lower implications, the one that you played Charles. But
like back in the day, like on S and E S,
I used to love Bomberman. It was like one of
the og like party games for me. So to have
like just a giant bundle of them together, that just
sounds like that's going to be just like it's gonna
be one of those switch games. That's just always installed
in case they're like really friends or like you know,
like at a party and it's like, hey, let's just
do some four player Bomberman right now. Let's we have
like six seven games to choose from, and then the
other one. I don't even know if this will be good,
but it made me laugh is a Tokyo scrambled.
Speaker 2: Okay, I'm glad you're bringing this up, because I was
still bringing up survival adventure game that I think they
said it was, yes action game.
Speaker 3: You're you're playing a woman who's like on a train,
and then everything goes wrong, like the tunnel that you're
traveling over collapses on itself, and then it turns out
like underground, it's filled with these night dinosaurs.
Speaker 2: They're not dinosaurs, they're not dios zinos, And as far
as I can tell, the only difference between a zino
and a dino is like really cool hair, Like all
the dinosaurs have like sweet there's like veloci raptors, like
sweet mohawks and like mains and stuff.
Speaker 3: Like they're just weirdly furry reptiles. And you're just like
sneaking around trying to like dodge these zinos and it
looks so dumby spells.
Speaker 2: I know, z I n os I think, yeah, literally,
It's just the thing that caught my eye about this
announcement that I didn't even register until I was watching
back through the direct for the recap. It has game
Share in it, but the way the game share works
is it says up the four people can play together
from their own systems with just one game. Using the
Nintendo Switch to Systems Gameshare feature, you can distribute the
controls between everyone or give a single player full control,
so you could have four different people controlling a single
character a stream each. I was one is doing like
one person's doing camera controls, I think, and somebody else
is maybe doing inventory or something. It was unclear in
the direct. I feel like I would need to watch
it again because it goes pretty fast when they show it.
But I was like, that seems Tailor made for an
incredible live stream.
Speaker 3: So that's line. We all need to get Tokyo Scramble
codes and we surprise super replay. We all try to
beat to.
Speaker 2: How many game Former editors does it take to beat
Tokyo Scramp. I mean it's out next week. This happen thing.
Speaker 4: It has to be the next super reeplay. But we
are almost done with the Black Night we are.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it does a good chance we'll be done on Friday,
it happens. But yeah, the Ziono's man, they're coming, got it.
It takes four people to deal with those things. The hair,
you know. So yeah, that looks so dumb.
Speaker 1: And we could do an overlay where the buttons that
the person are responsible for are on their webcam so
people know like which button they're supposed to Ye.
Speaker 3: This is like this equivalent of being in a school
play and two people have to beat a horse and
it's like, all right, am I the butt or am
I the front? But like you add two more each.
Speaker 2: One leg of the horse. Yeah, it's a it's a
wheelbarrow race. Where have you ever done those where two
people are like one person's running the other one's holding
the other person's legs and they have to like run
in the front on their hands like that.
Speaker 3: It's like a video game megazor.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, wow, well great, anything else you wanted to
shout out, Marcus before we wrap up?
Speaker 3: That's pretty much it. I mean, there's other stuff that
looks cool, but it's a lot of stuff that we
knew about.
Speaker 2: You know, yeah, there are a few things on this list.
Speaker 4: You were going to say, I was gonna sy, I
feel like we should mention the Bethesda stuff.
Speaker 2: I think it's like.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's cool.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it is just news worthy of the very least.
I think.
Speaker 4: I think we're all of the mind that it's like
games we've played before on other systems, but if you've
never played it before, you want to check it out
on to go. They've got other scrolls obliviing remastered Fallout
four and any of Jones in the Great Circle are
all coming to switch To. Which Fallout four is coming this.
Speaker 2: Month anniversary edition? Correct? Yeah, right, which is yeah, Livness
sometime later, I said this early, but it felt like
a very middle of the showcase announcement and not an
end of showcase announcement. I was a little surprised, and
I maybe, you know, the the Heat of Oblivion remaster
coming to switch To, which is probably the most notable
of these announcements, although Great Circle running on the switch
To also pretty impressive too. But it just felt like
a very strange note to end on, not a new
game reveal or anything like that, especially when there was
other stuff I think stuff like Grand Blue Fantasy, Relink
finally coming to Switch, and with the Ragnarok expansion that
they announced, I think like Kyoto Zana Do looks kind
of cool and a lot of stuff in here. It
was just kind of like a little bit more poppy.
But I get that that's a little bit more niche
interest than like Bethes does. Is it's going to be
the big seller. Everybody's going to buy a Bethesda game
on their own their switch. It's going to happen.
Speaker 3: So that's what I was gonna say, Like, if you
don't have like a big new thing to show, then
he may as well end in a like a big name.
So like, yeah, camera, like, hey, I'm ringing some stuff
over to you, guys. I'm Santa Claus with a bag
of gifts where you switched to owners.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, we're gonna stay on the Nintendo train because Charles,
you flew out to New York to play several uh
new games updates all that stuff. I'm gonna pass it
to you because you know what you played. But I
know we're gonna be talking about Mario Wonder DLC Virtual Boy.
You checked out Pragmata and Ari Requiem, is that right?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I played all those.
Speaker 4: I hopped on a passenger car on the Spirit Tracks
and that Nintendo's train up to New York.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 4: So this is my first Nintendo event. I've never been
to one before. So, like I've been to stuff at
Summer Game Fest of like like a properly produced like
when you do a cover trip, it's like, oh, this
is the studio. You're just kind of hanging out and
we'll be nice to you and get your food and
stuff or whatever. And then sometimes it's like this is
a preview trip. We like decorated the set and there's
like snacks out and stuff, and like I and then
I this Nintendo one. I show up. It's in the
lobby of this like fancy building. The guy's like, can
I get you a coffee or anything? I was like,
do you have any waters? Actually he's like yeah, sure,
comes back with a canned water.
Speaker 2: I'm like, oh, it's this kind of place.
Speaker 3: Cann You're like bar for like, oh, this is.
Speaker 2: I'm drinking a can.
Speaker 4: I've never bought a canned water before. It's not flavored water,
just like plane canned water was like that they were airports. Yeah, anyways,
there was also like like waiters in suits that would
cut like I just I was like a lot of
Batman stuff lately, but just like it feels like a golla.
Bruce Wayne would be at where like a random door opens,
a waiter comes out and he's like, was you like a.
Speaker 2: Steak and freaked bite?
Speaker 4: And it was like it was like little pieces of
steak on like tiny fried potatoes. They had like uh,
Caesar Brussels sprouts, was like a Brussels sprout that they
injected Caesar salad dressing into.
Speaker 2: They had what has happened at this event?
Speaker 4: They had truffle grilled cheese bites with a little shot
class of carrot turmeric soup.
Speaker 2: Oh, I've never been to it. Yeah, this is way
more and I had been to.
Speaker 1: I had been to Nintendo events and I have not
experienced this.
Speaker 4: There was I took like a picture of at one
point they had like many cream puffs. They had many
cheesecake bites, and then they had a wall with like
a bunch of like strings with clothes pins and they
were attached. They had bags of little snacks of you
could just take and ghost. So I got like a
blueberry OSSI granola for the morning and a white cheddar
hol of paniol popcorn bag for that night. And it
was that like not like pre like it was obviously
pre package, but it wasn't like a brand I recognized.
It was just like the fancy Snacks bread.
Speaker 1: Anyway, that's an important question. Yeah, everyone's wondering this. How
many cream puffs did you eat?
Speaker 2: Uh? I only ate like two. The thing I actually
control self control. They had uh peri Pierrie chicken skewers,
and somehow I kept I kept running into the chicken
skewer guy, like I don't know if this guy.
Speaker 3: He keep coming up to you, maybe like he's just
like I know this guy likes him. I'm just gonna
keep making my rounds. And so.
Speaker 4: I love the idea of being one of those waiters
and just being like, I'm just gonna pester the hell
out of this.
Speaker 2: One guy and be like beer Chicken, perod Chicken.
Speaker 1: I'd have bets on who I could feed the most
part chicken too, I had I to Uh, I wore
cream puffs.
Speaker 3: I went to an event for Codvein two a few
months ago, and it was a very similar sort of vibeh.
It was like a bunch of really fancy finger food
with waiters coming up to you and say, hey, you
want this. And I had a person that had like
these little kind of like fried chicken things that were
like really good and no one else was taking them.
So she's like you can have two, and I'm like okay.
And then from that point forward, like her and another
person that had the fried chicken thing kept coming up
to me like literally got around literally every few minutes
as I'm trying to talk to people, someone will come
up to be like fried chicken.
Speaker 2: And it was like, hey, we got to get rid
of this stuff.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, Like did I establish myself as like that's
the fried chicken guy over there?
Speaker 2: If you work in the food service industry, please write
in and let us know, because I've been convinced that
this does happen, because the last time I had any
situation like that was not an event. They basically take
me into a basement and put me in front of
a CRT for most events, but at a friend's wedding,
they had you know, catering and waiters who were going
around with organs and appetizers and shout.
Speaker 1: Up Brendan groom. I'm guessing you're talking about.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, And I did think that there were people
that they zeroed in on because they'd come out with
full plates and you know, you got to get rid
of the food on your plate, get back, get some more.
So I think they started zeroing in on the people
that were eating certain stuff so they could keep Our
group was.
Speaker 1: Definitely going in one. There was like some mac and
cheese bites that the group was really crazy.
Speaker 2: We were going in on on that.
Speaker 3: Did you like the cheese much at a major anger
like our Senio Hall?
Speaker 1: No, No, I don't have that problem.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Anyway, sorry to interrupt. No, you were at a Nintendo
preview event.
Speaker 4: I also Yeah, I was gonna say just the waiters
made me feel underdressed for a Nintendo preview event, which
was crazy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, where you're surrounded by an army of Alfred's.
Speaker 2: So exactly, uh you know, in a room of alfred anyways.
Speaker 4: Uh yeah, So I hope you had a little pod
and we were going around playing all these different games.
Speaker 2: Started out with uh.
Speaker 4: Super Mario Brothers, Wonder, Nintendo Switch to Edition plus Meet
Up in Bellow Bell Park. That's the full title of
the game. That's all that fits all that's good. Se Yeah,
I saw the the the Nintendo representatives had to they
had to say the full title anytime they addressed it,
which I really know they had to.
Speaker 3: Did you take that by making them say it over
and over?
Speaker 4: I should have the right Today today you'll be playing
Super Mario Brothers, Wondering Attenniswich two Edition plus Medium Billabill Park. Yes,
on Ntennis was two on this TV and like it
was just very clearly like a challenge that they were
up to. Anyways, if you're if you're not familiar with it,
it's like it's a new expansion's coming out March twenty six,
I believe, and adds a bunch of stuff to the game.
But the main attraction is Attraction Park, which is just
like an area that's kind of like theme park themed.
And it's a bunch of multiplayer games. So there's there's
seventeen local multiplayer games, and then there's six online multiplayer games,
and they range from some are co ops, some are competitive,
and then all the online like wireless ones are competitive also,
and we played a bunch of them and they're fun.
I got to play as Rosalina, a new character. Okay,
but so just an example of one of them. There's
one where you're tossing it's like a hot potato game
with the bob bomb. It's like a big golden bab bomb,
and it'll have a talking flower will say a character's name,
and you got to toss the bomb to that character
or else the timer will go down. And that was
when we kept losing, not because the timer went down
too low, but because if you throw the bomb off
the cliff, you instantly lose, and we just keep eating
the bomb incorrectly. There's another one where, uh, you are
some people are using mouse controls on the joy Con
and they're drawing donut blocks, and then other people have
to like navigate through a level on the platforms that
you're drawing. There's another one where it's.
Speaker 2: Only draw donut blocks.
Speaker 4: Correct, There's there's other there's other like things for them
to stand on. It's not just like a big empty
field with only donut blocks.
Speaker 2: But it's like you're, okay, so you're like placing donut blocks,
You're not actually like drawing them. Uh.
Speaker 4: When I say drawing, I'm saying like it's like as
if the brush was donut blocks. So I clicked down
on the mouse okay, and it would rag a line
of donut blocks.
Speaker 2: O got it.
Speaker 4: The struggle there for me was they're very the controls
really wanted you to make straight lines, so it wanted
it to be horizontal or vertical. So I would try
to draw like a staircase and it would it would
be like the Hyppot News of a triangle, and it
would auto correct it to like a right angle, so
it would make all these like impossible jumps. But I
realized that it wants you to do like a bunch
of horizontal platforms to help them get up somewhere, or
to like direct you know, one of the spikes spike
balls to go a certain place or to avoid at
certain things. So yeah, then like some of the competitive ones,
there's like a red light green Light one where there's
a giant king Boo in the background and if you're
moving when he looks at you, then you get stunned
and you drop some coins.
Speaker 3: That's when that's what they were going for, clearly.
Speaker 2: Obviously Sniper back there, there's one where.
Speaker 4: You all have baby Yoshi's and you're trying to get
as many fruits as possible, and all these are like
that's that's uh An Island attraction. I guess you can
just go to in the park, but there's a bunch
of different levels and.
Speaker 2: Like difficulty levels there.
Speaker 4: So like one of these attractions isn't just you throw
the bomb back and forth and that's the game and
you did it. It's like there's I don't know how
many stages there are, but let's just say like seven
stages of increasing difficulty where you have to go do
that with other people. And Yeah, I thought I thought
it was fun. I thought now that I knew there
was I don't think I really had a grasp of
the scope of it, but it is a thing that
I feel like it'd be fun to just like sit
down with some people and just like grind through all
the coop things together, just try to get like good
scores and get.
Speaker 2: To all the highest star counts.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it does maintain kind of my thing of like
I don't know when this comes out, Like I'm sure
a lot of people played this game solo, but this
seems to be a primary multiplayer focused DLC. So if
you're like a solo player, I don't I don't really
feel like there's a huge draw to get this and
nothing that I was shown implied that there's plenty of
other stuff they're adding, though they're also adding it's a
switch to edition also, so the resolution is higher. But
like the resolution on the main game was like fine,
the performance was fine. They're adding in costar Luma, which
is a thing that you can another a second player,
or as long as there's one other player, one of
the players can use a mouse just kind of drag
Luma around the screen and pick up coins and stun
enemies and stuff. But yeah, I thought I thought it
was fine. I thought it was good. I wasn't like
blown away, but it was like I was like.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Mario Mario Party Games. That's that's fun.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it doesn't seem like something I'm going to go
back to play, to be honest, but maybe if you're
if he didn't play Mario Wonder, it's kind of like, oh, okay,
there's some more to the package.
Speaker 3: Now more Wonder.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I mean to be clear, it is if you never
played it, you got to buy the game. They also
got to spend twenty bucks for the LC so it's
not really like a I don't see this bringing new
people in. I know there were some people that complained
that they didn't think the base game was like a
good multiplayer experience, which.
Speaker 2: I disagree with. But this is a more multiplayer specific experience.
Sure is this? Is this a pack in with N
s O? Do you get this through the N s O?
I believe it is not.
Speaker 4: I think I looked it up recently and it was not,
which I was interesting. Yeah, other than that I played,
I played some Mario Tennis Fever. I didn't play a
ton of that, and I was bad at it.
Speaker 3: Did you get to use Baby Luigi or Baby Sorry
Baby wall.
Speaker 2: I had the option. I chose not to. He kind
of freaked me out a little bit. But someone I
played against.
Speaker 4: It, it's a It's a game that was very overwhelming,
which surprised me. It's a thing that like you would
expect to go into and it's like, oh, it's tennis,
but it's Mario, and Mario as like an adjective modifier
on a game means like fun and chilling party. But
there there's so many characters. They all have different like
stats and abilities, and there's so many fever rackets, and
the fever rackets are like the gimmick in this game
where they each have like a special power, and it's
like every twenty second and twenty Sixon is even generous,
but we'll say every twenty seconds someone uses an ultimate
move from like Super Smash Bros.
Speaker 2: You just like I have no idea how I'm supposed.
Speaker 4: To counter this, where like, uh, I'll think I hit
a good shot in the outside, and then my opponent
Wallauigi will just use his fever racket turn the ball
into a bullet bill and then if it hits me,
I die and he wins the point that happened to
me multiple times where I would just get hit and
die and lose the point. So it's the thing that
like you have to know what the fever rackets do
and you have to understand how to counter them if
you're gonna play like a proper match with someone that
has the abilities.
Speaker 1: Mario Tennis, I feel like always has like a bit
of a curve difficulty curve that you gotta kind of
get over, and once you're over, it's like it's really
smooth and you you're like, once you understand what each
of the characters do, you're like, oh, okay, we gonna have
some really solid back and forths now, Whereas like what
if you It sounds like even played a ton of
Mario tennis in the past.
Speaker 4: I played, I played some of Ace's, but it's it's
a game that I don't I don't think was bad.
It just didn't make for a great demo if you
don't know what all the things do. It also is
it does a thing that Kirby Air Riders did that
I wasn't a fan of, which is if you're in
a single player menu screen, you hover over each character,
it's like, oh, Donkey Kong does this, these are his stats,
this is the type of character here. That's what this
character does. And you hover over the fever racket, it's like, oh,
this will when I hit it, it will make an ink
blot land on the field, and then it'll block the
cameras or whatever. If you have more than one player,
all of a sudden, you don't get those summaries or
those stat breakdowns. You just kind of have to hurt
you know what they do, You just pick them out.
So I was glad that I did a match or
two on my own first, But then it just gets
into a thing of like you're in a doubles game,
everyone's using a different fever racket and you have to
just figure it out. Yeah, but a few hours in
I think it would make sense. And I'm sure that
if you're like a Mario Tennis sicico, it's not gonna
be that much virtile. You also turn them off if
you feel like doing that.
Speaker 2: Sure. Yeah, so you also played the Virtual Boy.
Speaker 4: Right I did. I didn't throw up.
Speaker 2: Eventuality, Like did they have buckets nearby for people or.
Speaker 4: If they did, they weren't like public they were.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the little chicken skiers and little like airplane bags
have like Mario and Luigi on them.
Speaker 2: That would be so funny.
Speaker 4: On that note, I did get a tennis I did
get a free tennis ball for playing Mario Tennis.
Speaker 2: That's always. It wasn't branded. It was just a it
was just a greed tennis fall. You all them out
of the tube in the back and just bought your
They bought your opinion, Charles, there were lots of you,
all the free food.
Speaker 4: You were like, that's not about opinion, but one a.
Speaker 2: Tennis ball from academy. Yeah, that's the problem.
Speaker 3: But you were I think you asked if any of
us had ever played Virtual Boy. Yeah, I don't. I
don't think I ever have. I've definitely like I've put
my eyeballs into a virtual boy before, but I don't.
I don't think i've ever actually like turned one on
and played a game that I can recall. But I
you know, just getting into the position, you're like, oh,
this seems like a nightmare to just sit down and
the position exactly like this is okay.
Speaker 2: So the switch slots into the virtual boy, right, so
you're kind of putting it in like you would with
those those VR goggles that you can put your phone into.
Kind of sure, yeah, do the joy con stay attached
to then like the barrel of the virtual boy or
do you kind of just like go with kimbo on
each side of it? And justin I had, I had
I had a switch? Where does the.
Speaker 4: So so I didn't. Yeah, I didn't have to touch
it or anything. It was just like up on but
it was it still was it tripod mounted?
Speaker 3: Did you saw?
Speaker 4: Yeah, It's like it was like a full proper virtual boy.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: But now, so I'll get to your your question is
not crazy?
Speaker 2: Second, the berganomics of this thing are driving me crazy.
They can't sleep.
Speaker 4: It comes with when when they showed it. It was
just sitting there on the table. There's also like different
stations for each thing. There were four Virtual Boy tables,
and I never saw more than one person over there
at any given time. The tables are all adjustable, so
I walk over and they start like cranking the table
to like lift.
Speaker 1: The tables are adjustable the stand that the Virtual Boy
is on the table.
Speaker 2: But they didn't. They didn't bother.
Speaker 3: They're like, you're probably gonna want a standing table you're
going to.
Speaker 4: And my my vertic is that it didn't make me
throw up. I put my head in, it worked, my
glasses fit in there. I was like, honestly, this thing
works as advertised.
Speaker 2: Did I like love the games?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 4: But what what game from nineteen ninety five are you
gonna drop in front of me with no warning that
I am gonna love? I was on All Things Nintendo
yesterday with Brian, and I was like, my parents met
after the Virtual Boy was discontinued.
Speaker 3: That's like my way for it discontinued. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
They had eyed each other and they're like, well till
this thing's gone, I can't.
Speaker 2: Talk to her exactly. It's like a butterfly effect thing
imagine that the virtual boy had stuck around, what would happen? Yeah,
I didn't exist?
Speaker 4: Yeah now yeah, so it worked and it was fine,
and I was like, yeah, I don't know, it's kind
of cool. It's like a fun historical thing that it's
just like these kind of weird, obscure games you couldn't
play very easily, and now there is a way to
play them.
Speaker 2: That is my verdic.
Speaker 4: That's like if if you know what a virtual boy
is and you're like, I wish I could play these
games on my switch, you are able to do that.
If you're not a Virtual Boy fan, I don't know
why you would get this thing. It's one hundred dollars
plus the n dentdo Switch expansion pack. And to Eric's point,
there's also a cardboard model. And Eric was like, do
you have to put the joy cons in the thing?
And I cannot find any evidence that there is a
stand for the cardboard model and we have seen any image.
I think ideally you would, but I haven't seen an
elastic band, Like, there's no pictures of anyone.
Speaker 2: To your hobby lobby and getting that yourself, Yeah.
Speaker 4: You should, yeah, correct, you should style the image. I
have seen is of the joy cons on the side
of it with the lens in the middle. So it's like, yeah,
like you're in a submarine a psychopath.
Speaker 1: You've got the click wheel from the viewfinder and yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4: And to be clear, I'm not one hundred percent sure,
but I saw one there. It was just kind of
sitting in a They wouldn't let us touch it the
glass display.
Speaker 3: Like this thing's fragile aus hell guys.
Speaker 1: And I was like playing my virtual boy on the plane.
The guy in front of me leans his chair back.
Virtual Boy on the plane is like a Charles throw
up curse.
Speaker 2: It's like that.
Speaker 3: Sounds like a like a gen Z Internet challenge.
Speaker 2: One of my one of my favorite things to do
with my switch, genuinely is if I'm traveling or something
and I've got kind of a night off, I'm not
doing anything or whatever, head down to a bar or whatever,
sit down, post up, pull my switch out. I did
that on this last trip. I played some Octopath Traveler zero.
I was having a drink at the bar. I was
having a good time, and it's kind of like having
a kindle. You just are playing a video game and
now all I can do is picture somebody sitting down
at the bar, like ordering a pine then pulling up
the virtual Boy just sitting there at the bar, Virtual Boy,
and I'm picturing an even more curse of Virtual Boy
bar where all of the inhabitants are all on their
warned us about.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I like the Satari hotels they're making.
Speaker 3: It's about time Nintendo stood up the meta and said
bet oh god Charles. By the way, I don't did
the reps say anything about like the the hundred dollars
Virtual Boy kind of like replica? Is that to scale
with the original Virtual Boy? Like is that just a
one to one recreation of it or did they do
anything to it at all? I mean, like in terms
of like the actual model, to improve it at all
or is it just like Nope, this is what it was.
Speaker 4: I didn't ask, but it seemed pretty accurate based on
like the one time I've seen a Virtual Boy in
person and seeing it there like it was it was
a chunky device, Like it seemed to me that they
had if they wanted to make it sleeker, they failed,
Like it just looks like it just looks like how
it did before.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the original controller, like the little dinky controller came with.
I assume that's not there.
Speaker 2: Uh yeah, there's no alternate controller.
Speaker 3: Okay, yeah, funny if they tried to repackage that, like
the N sixty four controller, like you can with charge
you eighty bucks for a replica Virtual Boy controller.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think if I if I squid my eyes
really hard, like like borderline closed and everything's blurry, I
can be like, this is a cool thing for games
preservation and being able to play these things in an
ergonomic form factor that is similar to the manner in
which they were released originally. That's great. I love that.
But then I look at the price tag and the
actual ergonomics of the Virtual Boy and everything around it,
and I'm like, I really want to know who is
like chomping at the again. If you are that person,
please let us know. I'm genuinely curious. I'm fascinated by
this thing.
Speaker 3: So I will say they went about this the right wags.
There's there's a version of this. I almost wish they
did were Could you imagine if they had not announced
the GameCube library and this was the first like new
classic game library for.
Speaker 2: Switch to that would be so awesome.
Speaker 3: How angry people would be that they did this before GameCube,
but they did it. They did it the objective like
right order, Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: Someone in the bag is like, we can't. We got
to do Path of Radiance before this comes out, all right,
we can't wait till after.
Speaker 1: Also, I love how that, like you know, when there's
not when there's like a console or game that's not
for us, we can always fall back on. Well, it's
good for games preservation, so it's really really.
Speaker 2: Important for that.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't touch it with a thousand football, but it's great,
great preservation.
Speaker 4: And it's also like preservation. It costs one hundred dollars
and also have to pay them forever to play.
Speaker 2: Switch your eyes really narrow, like like we're talking no
light coming in barely through the lashes, and you're.
Speaker 3: There when you put it that way. This is more
expensive than the original Virtual Boy ever was.
Speaker 2: Yeah, what do they cost us to get here? Anyways?
The last thing preservation. Last thing I.
Speaker 4: Did, Actually there's two things I did. I'll have a
special surprise at the end.
Speaker 2: But I got to.
Speaker 1: Play because the collection is coming to the Virtual Boy,
I got to play.
Speaker 3: Virtual Jesus Shot VR.
Speaker 2: Uh do you think? Never mind?
Speaker 1: Charles really trying to keep the train on the tracks.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Well, I was just like there was a lab of
v are, like, I wonder if that would work with
the Virtual Boy headset, and it's gotta.
Speaker 2: Have all the like chords and stuff that we're attached
to it. So you're just doing all this man the
Virtual Boy everywhere.
Speaker 3: There's probably a good chance that this was born out
of life OvR, right, like they did that and then
someone said, you know, we could make like a cardboard
when it boy, and yeah, and then it's just kind
of ball rolling from there.
Speaker 2: Anyways.
Speaker 4: I I also played Pragmata and Residue a Requiem on
Switch To, which was cool. Those two games were very
good and exciting. Marcus, you played Progmat at Summer Game Fest, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it sounded like it was the same. I mean,
I think I was going to it's the same as
the public demo, which is then what you played.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think I played.
Speaker 4: Marcus played Pragmata and Residue Requiem. Eric, you're dying over there.
Speaker 3: What happened?
Speaker 2: It was just slowly turning purple.
Speaker 1: We're trying, we're trying to get back on track, and
I just saw I just got through Alex's mind thing
to say, I'm just picturing the guy who comments on
our videos, who's like, I hate the word association jokes.
Speaker 2: He's just raging in his.
Speaker 1: Car, screaming, trying to listen to a normal podcast.
Speaker 3: I mean, he can escape if he wants to escape this,
he can get a virtual.
Speaker 2: Boy and yeah pod, Yeah, all right, I'm done. Every
time I pass across your eyes, you're just sitting there, like, yes,
Pragmata I played.
Speaker 4: I was gonna say, I know. Marcus played Resting Recommend
Summer game Fastest Year. He also played Pragmata. I played
both the demos he played then but now on the
switch to. So it wasn't like new stuff no one's
seen before. And we learned the Partner Showcase that the
Pragmata demo is coming to switch to for everyone. But
I don't I don't know if this Residue Requiem demo
has been publicly available.
Speaker 3: Did you get to play a Leon? And okay, it
was just or Claire.
Speaker 4: Grace yea, but yeah, So I I played both games,
and I was I was impressed that they ran pretty well.
I I like it was honestly in both instances, I
was like, this is the best case scenario for a
Switch two port, and the notion they're coming out like
on the same day is really cool because a lot
of times you'll get yeah, you know, like what we're
doing this Bethesda thing where it's like a year and
a half later it will come to switch to and
it'll look worse, and it's like, that's cool that it's
here finally, But it's not like, I don't know, it's
so so many trade offs to get it portable, and
now it's a thing where it's like, yeah, you're you're
paying a little bit for the graphics. But like Resting
a Requiem especially, I was playing it and I was
very immersed and I I was not thinking about the
fact that this was on a switch too. I was
just like, oh my god, I'm gonna die. I'm terrible
at this game.
Speaker 2: That's great.
Speaker 1: That's kind of a great takeaway to know, because you know,
I am one of those people. I'm like, do I
sacrifice some of that fidelity for the option to play
on the go and for people who are just on
switch you know, you can kind of be part of
the zeitgeist as it's you know, that's a fun thing
that's I think, ways into people's you know, purchase decisions.
Speaker 2: You know that's cool.
Speaker 3: Though, Did you play a doctor on doctor? Did you switch?
Speaker 4: I had the option for both, but I I did
the demo on docked. But I'm pretty sure there were
people that played on dock that I.
Speaker 3: Heard, Wait, you played doc or you played.
Speaker 2: I played docked, So I played, I think I said.
Speaker 4: On yeah yeah, uh but yeah, and and Pragmata also
looked good.
Speaker 2: I think in both of them.
Speaker 4: The biggest the biggest place you notice it is in
the cut scenes, just because it doesn't have the tech
to render it in as high detail as the like
bigger powerful consoles or a PC. I was saying, like
the Ari engine has a distinct like hair rendering tech
where you can see it's a little bit thinner and
less like there's us volume on the switch to versions,
But when you're actually playing the game, it's like it's
it's like you're on PC and you took it from
high quality graphics to medium quality graphics, but the performance
is good. You don't really think about the fact that
it could be running at like super super fancy yeah
stat so.
Speaker 3: Yeah, playing that game on dock seems tricky just because
it relies on a dpad so much, and a joy
Con dpad has never been like super great because it's
just those little, those little buttons, and if your hands
are like even like medium size, like pressing nose for
a long time and especially as fast as you have
to do it in that game doesn't sound like super great.
So that seems like one, if I got him on switch,
I would just be playing doc with the pro controller.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and to that note, the pro controller. I did
play Residentvil Requiem with the Resident Evil Requiem switched to
pro controller.
Speaker 3: It made it scarier. One.
Speaker 4: Uh, yeah, that thing, that thing is ugly, right, that's
like just kind of honestly, it.
Speaker 3: Just kind of looks like the original pro controller or
to switch one.
Speaker 2: More text on it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like.
Speaker 4: It's the newspaper clipping, but the news the letters are
interrupted by the logo of the switch to so it's
like resist switch to Ville.
Speaker 2: It looks like somebody accidentally got their newspaper stuck inside
their pro controller. Yeah.
Speaker 4: And seeing in person, also like it pops a lot
less than it does in images, so it's like kind
of a faded.
Speaker 2: It doesn't look as.
Speaker 4: In like I wish it was white, you know, I
wish it kind of like stood out that it was
like this is a newspaper.
Speaker 2: Instead, it's like it's.
Speaker 3: Not like the sort of like red and white that's
kind of like the key art for the game.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, I definitely would have preferred something boulder. Do
you any alternate colorways for the Switch one Pro controller?
I'm thinking about it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, there's a Zeno Blade one. I have a brother
Smash pros one.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm looking it up online. Oh, I see color
that's so strange looking.
Speaker 2: Huh.
Speaker 3: Here's my Switch one Pro controllers a breath.
Speaker 2: So what I'm saying is they all kind of.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I got it. Actually, it's the most first parties.
I got it from the Nintendo store that's inside of
the Nintendo of America, like their office.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because a lot of the like uh, Splatoon ones
and things like that had different kind of lower handles,
but then the base of it was always that kind
of like black matte finish that would have maybe a
different pattern on it, like the Splatoon one had the
splats and things like that. Yeah, And so I was
trying to think if they ever had any solid color
separate ones and I'm looking at a list of all
the official ones. It looks like they all kind of
had that.
Speaker 3: Here.
Speaker 2: I'm posting the image in our in our slack right now.
Speaker 3: As you do that, Charles, how did it feel as
someone that was the co pilot on our Residual Outbreak
super replay you finally got to control an Ashcroft for
the first time? How was that for you?
Speaker 2: I did? It was It was fine. It was u.
Speaker 4: It's interesting demo because you don't I mean, it purposefully
wants to make you feel very powerless, powerless, but you
also can't do.
Speaker 2: All that much, like you don't have any weapons or anything.
Speaker 4: I also it reminded me of Residentevil seven a lot,
which for context, I played Resideval seven in eight like
over December January Break. I had never played a Resident
Evil before, and that was like my introduction to the series.
I loved A I tolerated seven. It's too scary for
me and also made me incredibly motion sick at the start.
Speaker 3: Doesn't make you feel better that the director of seven
is the director of Requiem.
Speaker 4: Well, I noticed, I guess because I started writing this
demo and I was like, golly gosh, this is scary.
And also I'm going to throw up. The nice thing
is that so I did get motion sick. The thing
that screwed me in seven is there's no persistent dot
in the center of the screen on the PS five
version I was playing.
Speaker 2: That's something that.
Speaker 4: Really helps me, like keep my bearings, especially if it's
in first person. And I could have switched a third person,
but for whatever reason, I was really determined to play
first person requiem. But you can turn on the persistent
dot in the menu even in this demo I played,
so it was like it helped helped a lot. It's
an improvement over seven, which I looked it up and
several people were like, yeah, I've always tried to play
this game and it makes me so sick in the start.
But seven gets better once you get a gun because
then there's the radical on screen that helps.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I like knowing that residue will seven got you
motions like but the virtual boy can do it. Yeah,
that's quite a metric. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: And my last super fun surprise thing is you guys,
I got to see the talking flower toy.
Speaker 2: Oh huge they were.
Speaker 4: There was a few scattered about the event space, and
I walk up to an end representative, and I said,
are these things on right now? And they're like yeah,
but the speakers for all the games are so loud,
so you probably won't hear those.
Speaker 3: So how does that thing work? Again? Is it like
sotion sense or how do you make it talk?
Speaker 4: So it's it's a talking flower has a speaker box
and has a bunch of voice lines that says stuff
like you hear in the game, and when you turn
it on, it does voice lines about twice an hour
at random intervals.
Speaker 3: Oh, so it's out of nowhere.
Speaker 2: Just you'll just have it on and then here I
think you're neat, so you're.
Speaker 3: Just like signing up for jump scares. It sounds like yeah.
Speaker 4: Also, uh, it can you can change it to other
languages and sometimes, though it said in the random voices,
it'll randomly do a different language than the one you
have selected.
Speaker 3: Oh, I don't know about like that. That sounds like
like like I used to little quips.
Speaker 2: And then from the corner of the room, it's like
a flowers screaming German at you.
Speaker 3: Like that makes it sound like it's positive. Like it
reminds me of when I used to have an Alexa.
Every now and then when I had like an update,
it would be like really quiet in my apartment, and
then all of a sudden, Alexa would chime in with
something like unprompted, and it would scare the crap out
of me, Like it sounds like just signing up for
that willingly of just flower head quiet. And then here's
something in Swahili.
Speaker 2: I don't know, Yeah, who buys the talking flower so
his Alexa has something to talk to? Is that any
I was thinking?
Speaker 4: Also, yeah, like a like a game Enfarcar story where
we're like new talking flower DLC adds malevolent cats phrases
where it's just like I'm watching you or Alexa turn
off all the lights.
Speaker 3: Is this Nintendo's like everyone has their like AI chat bot?
Is this there?
Speaker 2: Is?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: This is like committed to anime wife who on your
desktop but it's just a smiling talking flower now and
start talking to each other and then plotting against you.
Is Yeah.
Speaker 4: There's also a thing on it where it's like, uh,
you can set into quiet mode for certain times of
the day, So if you're like I don't want to
talk to me while I'm sleeping, you can turn it
off for period of time. You can have an announced
the hour of the day, but it says sometimes it's wrong,
which I was like, what does that mean? Either it's
a clock or it's not. It's not just it's not
just randomly like uh. And also it can set like
it can wake you up in the morning, I think.
But if the time is wrong, maybe then.
Speaker 2: Then what it was? Because my talking flower didn't wake
me up at the right time.
Speaker 3: And they're building these as features right not yeah that
worked out.
Speaker 2: I don't know it was.
Speaker 4: It was very odd and I just love Also some
of the catchphrases are just like where am I? Or
like sleeping with my eyes open?
Speaker 3: Again? I forget like we say talking to but like
this talks at you. You're not conversating voice recognition or anything.
It's not an it's not an Alexa.
Speaker 4: There's also a button you can press on it to
make it talk. If you just want to be like, oh,
it's my thing at talk, it'd be like dy, yeah,
what a man?
Speaker 3: Who is this? Great question?
Speaker 2: Great question?
Speaker 3: It sounds like an unreliable alarm clock at best, and
just like a scary like voice machine at worst. I
don't know this.
Speaker 2: This is to figure out that I'm a terrible person,
because I now want to buy like twelve of these
and just to hide them in my friends and stuff,
and so yeah, yeah, Alex, it seems like if you
start hearing voices in the middle of the night.
Speaker 3: This sounds like this would be a nightmare. Like someone's
gonna buy this thing and bring it into like their
quiet office is like a desk decoration, and it's gonna
drive their coworker's nuts.
Speaker 4: They're so funny, guy, and don't tell them. It's also
a thing that like, who's a fan of this character?
Like I understand liking it or wanting like I could
see getting it as like a figure just to have
on your shelf.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's a cute character.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but just like having it on all the time
is like yeah, anyways, that was That was my Nintendo preview.
Speaker 2: It was Chicken and Flower. You've heard of This should
have been an email and now we have this should
have been an ambo. That's that's where we're at. Is
there not one already of the Talking Flower of the
Talking Flower?
Speaker 3: There might?
Speaker 4: I think they announced Mario Wonder Ambos.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I want to get this and an alarm o
and have them both be my alarm clocks.
Speaker 2: There is a talking flower ambo as it looks like
it's paired up with Captain Toad. Yeah, you gember from
to Flower.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they always inseparable. We can't have one without the other.
Speaker 1: Week yea, Uh well cool, Well, we're going to take
a quick ad break. We're going to come back and
talk Overwatch, Mugenics, and Neo three. We'll be right back
right after this. Welcome back to the Game Informer show. Marcus,
you did get new headphones, but.
Speaker 2: Sadly they're not charged.
Speaker 3: No, they exist.
Speaker 2: They exist.
Speaker 3: So next week, well, I or like by the time
you're listening to this replay probably will have already happened.
Speaker 2: The debut. Yeah, tune into replay for the debut.
Speaker 1: Uh well, let's get into Overwatch. Like I said, I
flew out to Blizzard last week and played that, and
you know, I'm sure people have already seen by now,
you know, but they are dropping the two from Overwatch too,
and it is just going back to being.
Speaker 2: Overwatch, but Overwatch to technically technically.
Speaker 4: Yes, technically a sequel still but not called Yeah, even though.
Speaker 2: It did they realize like why it was a bad idea.
Maybe Alex, you can probably speak to like what they
have actually said on record, but it has the feeling
of it's it's turning into a League of Legends, a
situation where it's like this is a service game and they're.
Speaker 1: Yeah, movie calling it like a forever game.
Speaker 3: I just think this is like an HBO Max situation
where like how much money was spent on that damn too?
In terms of marketing, we're just going to go back
to the old thing.
Speaker 1: And in terms of yeah, like building out like totally
different skew and like you know, different executable.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, a lot of a lot of work, but.
Speaker 3: Well a realm We're born was already taken, so.
Speaker 1: They go, but yeah, so overwatches going back to just
being Overwatch, and yeah, you're right, Eric, I did talk
to uh, some of the executives. It was in a
group interview setting, so no one on one stuff, but
they were kind of just speaking about yeah, you know,
I don't think they necessarily are are saying Overwatch too
is a mistake, but they are saying this is where
the game, what the game needs now, and you know
we're going to They did mention they they they are
really they're for Overwatch is to you know, have it
be like a return to form that's kind of like
their standard right now. And even in like you know,
this new narrative arc is called Reign of Talent. It
kicks off February tenth, and it's all about how Talent,
the villainous organization in the Overwatch universe. There's like a
lot of internal conflict and there's like, you know, kind
of a coup happening inside for the leadership role of Talent,
and so there will be in game cinematics. They've said
that it's like beginning the middle end, like this will
all be in the launcher. You can see all the
story happening in Overwatch, as well as like timed events,
you know, pick your side, who are you fighting for
kind of thing with you know, themes.
Speaker 2: Of Talent versus Overwatch, and there're.
Speaker 1: Got a lot of the limited time events and stuff
that are coming over the next year will fit into
that theme. But alongside this first season of Reign of Talent,
they're literally just called it Overwatch Season one. Very confusing, but.
Speaker 2: It is.
Speaker 1: And internally when I'm interviewing them, they are clearly referring
to the game as like, yeah, in twenty three, we
want to do this like they're clearly referring to it
as the real season number, but publicly having to talk
about it.
Speaker 2: It is like season one, very confusing.
Speaker 3: It's like rebooting the narrative almost a little bit of
like we're setting it's like Marvel Comics when I said
issues back to number one, but it's still continuing the narrative.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, And so they're doing that. But along
with this first new season, they're launching five new heroes
at once on February tenth.
Speaker 2: Crazy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a lot. I mean, used to be lucky
to get what five or six heroes a year if that,
and now you're getting five and one season and they've
committed to doing one hero per season for the rest
of the year.
Speaker 2: They did say we were at ten total.
Speaker 3: By the way over the course, Leader, I would love
did you ask Alex or did anyone at room ask,
like how much of like Marvel Rivals influenced that decision
of like because they pump out characters so quickly, it's
like like that is that just the way to go? Now?
Like we got to keep up with that pace.
Speaker 1: They that we didn't ask that specific question. I think
there was you know, people kind of referenced more the
more so like League or Dodo or like, you know,
as like having these massive rosters, right, And I don't
have the exact quote on me, but you know, in
one of my talks, they were they were like, it's
you know, adding a new hero is like the most
exciting thing you can do for players in Overwatch, and
so they really want to get They've also mentioned that
like they have really over the last couple of years,
not templatized, but like they have made new faster ways
and better tools to turn out heroes faster.
Speaker 2: And one of the one of the.
Speaker 1: Critiques that they got that you know, we brought up
was like, hey, a lot of the heroes are kind
of like they're all just kind of like hot humanoids,
you know, And they kind of mentioned how like going
forward they think they had like you know, they they
tackled jet Pack Cat, which is one of the new heroes,
which is very much not a templatized character. And the
reason that they have those templates to begin with is
like when you're making cosmetics for a character, having all
of your meshes and stuff fit well on the model,
you know, it's important. And so like, as they were
as you introduced a new hero, you have to also
promise to make more cosmetics for them, and so when
those cosmetics are you know, more aligned, you know, it
makes sense to have some some characters that are that
are humanoids. But they do admit that, like, you know,
I think actually folks asked, you know about Mama Wong,
which is like a long rumored character, and orang a Tank,
which is like that They specifically mentioned like, yeah, we're
kind of, like, you know, thinking about maybe going and
checking that out now that we've kind of conquered an
animal that isn't Winston, Like the new Jetpac cat is
just an animal, right, it doesn't speak, it has what
they talked about, like one of the big challenges were
the voice lines, because everything has to tie into the
ping system and tie into like so many people play
Overwatch without speaking because they just use the voice lines.
And how do you make a real life cat, Like
how do you make a cat that is like grounded
and being a cat? How do you communicate all of
those things that voice lens are supposed to communicate while
still being you're just meowing?
Speaker 3: Right wait?
Speaker 1: And they spent a ton of time on that and
they said they like finally got it right. We're like,
even though the cat's meowing, you can kind of tell, like, oh,
he's saying get on the payload or get group up.
Speaker 2: I guess it's just like all me owls.
Speaker 1: But you like the inflection the like they've said, like
internal testing has like really given them a lot of
confidence that like they are you know able to like
do those do those right?
Speaker 3: I feel like that might be true for like cat people.
I don't know if you're if you're like not a
cat person.
Speaker 2: I'm a cat dad, and I'm giving you like a
bit of a side eye right now, Like I don't
I don't know.
Speaker 4: I assume it's a human voice actor, yeah, doing the
cat sounds, which to me is like I can understand
how that could be.
Speaker 1: You can add inflections and stuff. That's actually when I
paid to me, I don't know why that's that's so
strange to me.
Speaker 3: I thought they were doing like a stray situation where
they just recorded like at Yeah, that's to me, Yeah,
I didn't.
Speaker 2: Know if it was a you know, it's a voice
actor being like.
Speaker 3: Cow, So are they trying to sound like a real
cat or is the joke? Yeah, it just sounds like
a person.
Speaker 1: Like like it sounds like a real cat. I have
played the game. It's I've played the character. Okay, they
do a good job.
Speaker 2: It's funny. We'll talk about it later. I doubt the
joy at work. I'm questioning the practice that goddess.
Speaker 3: I was wondering if it would be like, we'll talk
about it, assume, but eugenics they go the other way
with a joke, is that all the cats clearly are
just a person doing like a poor cat. Yeah, okay,
but I'm also just gonna say, like, what the little
hamster that's on the wrecking ball thing, I don't remember
his name, but like it's.
Speaker 2: Around inside a robot and the robot talks, gotcha.
Speaker 3: That's where I kind of fell off Overwatch. I couldn't remember.
It was like he didn't talk.
Speaker 1: Okay, no, no, he communicates via the robot.
Speaker 3: Gotcha.
Speaker 1: And they're like, well, this character, we don't want just
all of our animals to talk through robots. So let's
let's come up with a system where you know, after after,
after you have played enough games with with a jet
pack cat on your team, you know what the callouts are.
Speaker 3: So there you remember the mew for let's get let's push.
Speaker 2: No, I don't. Can you imagine getting cat for bad calms?
That's awesome. I'm coming around on this.
Speaker 3: What is the trash talking meal sound like?
Speaker 2: Oh, man, don't ask me. I don't know.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, that's pretty good.
Speaker 1: But it was really cute at the beginning of the
matches because I was like waving and saying hi to
the person on my team that was the cat, and
the cat is going yeah, but it like it was cute.
Speaker 3: I was like, what is great hip box? And that
cat paper seemed like it'd be like a really small
character and be like hard, well, no, it's a cat.
Speaker 1: He's on a he's on a flying contraption a huge
because it looked like small though, right, his head box
is small, like he's a small character.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 1: Her name's Fika, which means like an afternoon nap or
like a coffee It's like a coffee nap, like kind
of a coffee break or something in uh finish or
something like that.
Speaker 3: That's cute, kittish, Actually.
Speaker 2: Yeah, kittish.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there you go.
Speaker 2: We're talking about a lot about the cat. There are
four other heroes.
Speaker 3: Dropping next, but they're not cats Alex.
Speaker 2: That's true.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Domina is a tank and she puts out like
uh like astral like or Astra hard light barrier, so
I think like like a Ryan Hart Shield or or
you know, uh any of the other Shield character or
Matra Sigma. But hers is a giant like horseshoe shape,
so you can kind of like turtle yourself in in
some really fun ways. And then she's all about just
like zone control and she's a poke tank.
Speaker 2: She's cool.
Speaker 1: My favorite character from The Bunch to actually play was
she is the older sister of a character in the
game that's already in there. He's a support named Wu
Yang and he's got like a water stastiny. Yeah, so
she's like the older sister and she's all about controlling
flames and so her she has a pair of fans
that ignite people on fire, and after you get enough
hits in uh, they they catch on fire and have
like a burn status, and then you can use your
alt fire to fan a ton of like oxygen on
the flames to deal extra damage. And she also has
like her old can be used dead or alive, and
it changes based on context. So when she's alive, she'd
like kind of does this big dive in and this
AOI you know, explosion. But if you wait and you
you go in really hard and you die and you
kind of like go the enemy team to being towards you,
you can do you come back to life with an explosion,
which is like a cool mechanic. I like kind of
weaponizing your death. You know, death isn't always necessarily uh
you know, a bad thing, and I think it's cool
to to kind of.
Speaker 2: I've always bring that idea to Overwatch.
Speaker 4: The opposite of a suicide bomb, Yeah, a resurrection bomb.
Speaker 1: A life bomb, a life bomb.
Speaker 3: It's my favorite.
Speaker 1: Squad, but I like her a lot. She's really cool.
M Ray is the one I think getting the most
flak online because he literally just looks like a fan
fit character and he's like a a shooter. He has
a he's got a burst rifle and you can aim
down sites and then you can pull out a you can.
His whole thing is he's like a living weapon. So
he pulls out like this like burning hot pistol that
is like kind of like part of him kind of.
Speaker 2: And when you have that.
Speaker 1: Pistol out for like five or six seconds, you run faster,
you jump higher. You compare that with his grenade, which
explodes after a bounce, and you can do grenade jumps
to get to higher areas or to shoot over you know,
a tank that's blocking you, or or kind of get
a different angle. So he's a lot of fun rounds
of like halo grenade jumps back in the day. And
then his alt is he like turns into the I
think it's called the Living Weapon, and he turns into
like he because he goes like all cybernetic fiery stuff
and shoots these giant bursts and you can choose to
either do really rapid bursts of his weapon or you
can do charge up shots and shoot like really big explosives.
And then the last person we haven't talked about, but
we actually haven't really talked about jetpac Cat and what
the what she does? Yeah before jet pack Cat, Yeah
before Jetpaccat is Mazuki Musuki. He is a young ninja.
He's a healer and he has his casa like his
big hat like traditional Japanese hat that he throws and
it bounces between characters and heal them and then when
it returns to him, it heals himself.
Speaker 3: So he's like he's kind.
Speaker 2: Of like.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, he's kind of like Lucio where he's got
a healing ore around him, but unlike Lucio where it's
just kind of like static healing unless you do the
boot the healing boost, uh, you have to. Mizuki's resource
has like a resource tied to his heels where the
it's almost like a multiplier and you have to like
stay in combat, stay healing your allies to keep his
healing uh like power at max charge. Right, So he's
got other abilities that like let him lock down enemies
with like chains and then his ultimate summons like a
circular green barrier of sorts that heals enemies inside and
deflex bullets and other projectiles from the outside. He's a
cool character and he's all about kind of what if
a support had to notably also his his main weapon.
You throw it and it bounces off the walls, so
you do like a lot of cool like tech stuff.
But yeah, that's a music key. And then yeah, jet
pack Cat is always flying permanent flight. That's like they're
passive and they can pick up in tow allies and
enemies over the battlefield, and yeah, they're they're a lot
of fun, a lot of shenandas can get up to.
I didn't get a great you know, hands on with
jet Pat Cat and like a hands on experience because
we had no comms in our demo, so nobody was
on MIC. And then I'm playing with a bunch of
people I don't know, so there's not really a lot
of synergy happening. And you have to you can't just
pick people up without their consent as jet Pack Cat,
unless you unless it's an enemy and you're using your ultimate,
then you like dive in. It's called cat Napper. You
dive in, knock get Himy's back, and you drag one
with you and you can like lob them off the
map or take them out of the firefight like far away,
so that you know, if they're a key, you know, opponent,
like a tank, you can just take them away and
it kind of disrupts the flow of just.
Speaker 2: Like UFO, abduct them and take them out.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, but you can do that to your allies,
but they have to consent. So it's like you toggle
this mode on and you go and I think it's
called a lifelink, and you go from first person to
third person and you get kind of like a movement
boost a bit, and then they have to elect to
like grab on and latch onto you, and then you
can be you know, you can have a bashing turret
flying in the sky just bashing people. Or you can
pick up a Ryan Hart let him go and he
can alt from mid air from above people and come down.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of cool stuff.
Speaker 1: Diva olts. They're saying Diva can alt like mid air
and you can drop her on people.
Speaker 2: That's crazy. Yeah, it's like the.
Speaker 3: Thing is probably healthier for the game, but part of
me wishes that you could just grab your teammates without Yeah.
Speaker 2: I do think like the problems are worth the are
worth it for the moments. I would also be curious
if you can do like junk rat tires and things
like that.
Speaker 3: If if that.
Speaker 1: Kind I think so, I think, I know, I know
you can pick up Bob hashes Bob.
Speaker 2: I think she can. Yeah, if you can pick up Bob,
you can probably pick up like torp turrets and junk
rat tires and things like.
Speaker 1: Potentially, we asked specifically about Bob. Nobody asked about turrets
or drunk Rat.
Speaker 2: But picturing the end of the dark Knight rises, but
it's jet pack Cat flying off with the junk rat
tire the ocean. Yeah, there there is.
Speaker 1: What was I gonna say, Shoot, it's about jet pet cat.
Oh h And in our in our session, I was
speaking of the Japanese journalist with Famitsu, and he was
saying in his session that somebody there were two jet
pack cats. Was like mirror match. All of our matches
were miror matches because everyone was trying to play the
same heroes. But one jet pack cat use their old
to drag an enemy off the map, and another jet
pack Cat came in and saved their Their teammate was
there and and saved them.
Speaker 2: Could you jet pack cat grab a jet pack cat?
I create you can't?
Speaker 1: Yeah, to create a stack of grabs? Oh yeah, oh
there if they are if they had your teammate grabbed,
can you then grab the jet pat cat?
Speaker 2: And I think so?
Speaker 3: Can jet packs?
Speaker 2: I think so? And then we need mothers, We need
like road Hog to hook one of the cats to them.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah, So you know there's also they they
told us they didn't tell specifics, but there are like
some big hero reworks coming later in the year alongside
new maps and that kind of thing, and all of
like the the damage, tank support, they all have like
passives right now, and those passives are getting even like
further proliferated or distinguished rather by they're now a bunch
of new sub rolls and subclasses like within like tank
has like I don't know, the tank. Tank has like stallwart,
they have initiator, and they have another one, and then
like damaged Dealers have like flank, sharpshooter or Alex.
Speaker 2: If you want me to read them, sure, yeah, just
real quick.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Tank is Bruiser, initiator, Stallwart, Damages Sharpshooter, flank or specialist.
Recon Support is tactician, medic and survivor.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and each of those sub rules have a unique
passive and on the character select, rather than everyone just
being grouped up in three buckets, they are now you know,
those buckets kind of exist, but they are separated by
it's clearly denoted like under the characters like these are
the sharpshooters, these are the initiators, these are the flankers,
And so you have like if you're coming back to
Overwatch or if you're just like really trying to like
figure out, Okay, what role, what kind of play style?
And the am I in the mood for here's all
those characters that kind of fulfill that, and so it's
it's a nice quality of life as well as it
introduces new passives that are you know, pretty meaningful and
kind of just like further distinguish those those kind of
class identities from each other. So it's cool, and you
know that there's a bunch of UI updates and stuff.
You know, like you can see year year three D
model nowt in like the post screen and like on
the home page instead of like everything just being like
cards and like they want they're like, you have collected
these cosmetics, we won't you to be able to see
them outside of just you know, certain certain screens or
that kind of thing or in emotes. So, yeah, there's
there's a lot coming with the game, you know, they're Yeah,
it's it really does feel like they're making a big splash. Uh.
It's it's you know, this combined with last year's update
that that introduced Stadium, which is a really cool node
and like a brand like the fact that like they
brought six of V six back as like its own mode.
You know, it really does feel like, uh, you know,
I think they're getting close to that return to form
that they're talking about. They even I was, I was,
you know, Aaron Keller was mentioned a lot in my interviews.
He's kind of like the lead han show on Overwatch,
but folks were saying that, like he came to people
with like, I want to recreate that moment when we
first revealed Overwatch where you saw the lineup of characters.
Speaker 2: And you're like, oh, what do they do? What do
they what? Who's that?
Speaker 1: Who's that going to be? And like that that like
feeling of wonder. He's like, we wanted to do that
with this year, with this season, and so they have
shown off this all the silhouettes of the characters that
are coming this year. Uh and you know only five
have been revealed. But he's like they were all talking
about how like that's a big goal, like we want
to like recreate that feeling and kind of like bring Overwatch.
Speaker 2: Back to like h too, Yeah, to.
Speaker 1: Have it give it a return to form. So yeah,
it's it's it's exciting for somebody who spent years playing Overwatch.
And you know, I was even like not quite a
defender of Overwatch too and what they brought. But I
was like, I think it's getting a little blown out
of proportion, you know, sure, And you know, I had
eventually kind of fallen off and I was like, Okay,
I'm not just I'm not seeing a lot coming from
this game anymore. And it's very clear that like the
player bases dropped off, and like this really feels like
a big swing to get to make a.
Speaker 2: Splash again and come back.
Speaker 1: And I think it's you know, if you're if you
used to play and you're you're kind of thinking about
maybe checking it out, like I think it's worth it now.
Speaker 3: It's where people checking it out. So that's kind of
what I'm wondering. Is I you noticed about me, Alex,
I'm not really a big competitive multiplayer guy, like at all,
but like Overwatch was one of the few games that
actually did genuinely hook me for like the first I
would say, like a couple of years, yeah, and then
it kind of lost me towards the end as like
pretty much like after Overwatch League started and they kind
of like started wearing more and more kind of catering
towards the super competitive side. Because what I liked about
it was that it didn't feel it was competitive, but
it didn't feel like overly competitive, and those like first
couple of years like just had like a really nice,
pleasant vibe about it. Or it's like, oh, it doesn't
really matter as much as I'm like maybe not doing
as well as other people. They don't even tell you,
like Katie or anything like that. And then like kind
of like towards dam Overwatch too, it's like, oh, maybe
this is I don't know something about like that that
old like almost like innocent magic. It's kind of like
diminished and gone, and I don't know if I really
want to engage with this anymore. I don't know if
this could capture that again, because I think there's just
been too much to introduced that they so like retroactively
kind of like scale back in that seems like that
would be counterproductive for like the majority of their fans.
Speaker 1: I think that happens with a lot of multiplayer games.
It is like the first few months everyone's playing, especially
think of like an apex or something like everyone's playing
this game a lot of like casual players is like
a good mix and like things are like very fun
and like you're still discovering the game, and then a
year in the only the core you know, audience remains
and they are the ones who are wanting to get
better at the game, and so the skill ceiling just
continues to increase. And I find that happens with almost
every competitive multiplayer game.
Speaker 3: It is true.
Speaker 2: You go ahead, Eric, I was just gonna say, like,
I think there there is something to that, especially the
amount of content, because as cool as ten new heroes sounds,
that's also ten new heroes on top of what's already
in Overwatch that you might have missed while you were gone,
So that's like a lot. And then there's also the
fact that a lot of games like these, I mean,
alongside the Overwatch one announcement and this new season one
and all that, there was confirmation of new collabs and
skins and cosmetics, and it's just a lot. And there
was a simplicity about the original Overwatch launch, which at
this point was a decade ago, so you keep that
in mind. But yeah, yeah, it was ten years ago.
There was a relative simplicity to the game at the time.
But I also think there were in a strange way,
fewer guard rails, because I mean, I've been on record
that I never really like roll cue as an idea,
and I know it's not necessary to play the game,
but it does kind of start to define how those
characters interact in a space when they are kind of
put forward as like, Okay, well we're making a tank
character and they have to fit the tank slot. So
suddenly now the characters do have to fit within roles
and within boundaries and within guardrails of what a position
can be. So in some ways I am more interested
now that it seems like they're kind of trying to
by adding more buckets for these characters to go in
expand the idea of what those characters can be, rather
than funnel them into tighter categories of what they should be.
But that all remains to be seen. I am interested
in this. I will say it's as somebody who put
a lot hours into probably twenty sixteen to twenty nineteen Overwatch,
I would say, yeah, it sounds, it sounds really really cool,
and I like that they're taking a big swing at it,
if nothing else, because I think that's what you have
to do with this game, is you have to come
in and say, we're really trying to just top down revitalize,
revamp this thing, and taking the two off is a
big step in that direction. But I am curious because
there's a lot of I mean, hero shooters come and
go fast. I mean we cut some discussion of them
from this episode because we are so topic heavy already.
But there's High Guard, there's the new Deadlock update. There's
so many other hero shooters that come and go, or
even shooter adjacent games like Operators that come and go
that you know, can Overwatch stay afloat? I think is
the bigger question is maybe this makes a splash, Maybe
people come back. Do they stick to it? Do they
keep playing to season two? Do they keep doing this?
And that's my big question mark here.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but yeah, you know that's that's Overwatch. I'm excited
to check out the characters. They're they're coming out next
week and if I dive in, I'll be sure.
Speaker 2: I'll let people know what I think.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I say we move on. We got have
two more games we want to talk about.
Speaker 2: Charles.
Speaker 1: I want to hear about mugenics. This has been a
long time coming that it.
Speaker 4: Has This was a god I can't remember the scenario,
but I looked in an old game Form magazine to
cross reference some kind of thing and found that like
editor in chief Matt Miller had written a written a
feature on the game in like twenty thirteen or something
that's like twenty.
Speaker 3: Fourteen, and that's it was first announced in twenty twelve.
Speaker 4: Okay, yeah, yeah, mugenis if you don't know, it is
a new game from Edmund McMillan, Ed McMillan at McMillan,
who is known for budding Isaac's Meat Boy. Uh and
it has that same kind of art style. It is
a roguelike, like a strategic RPG where it is a
grid based uh think like fire in them, think hundred
line think one of those sorts of games.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Charles before just the credit him, it's Edmund and
Tyler Glaile is development.
Speaker 2: Bart Tyler Glaile. Okay, thank you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, because they made the they made the End Asnig together,
so this is like, okay, the second major project together.
Speaker 2: Yeah cool. Yeah uh yeah.
Speaker 4: So you have a party of four cats every run,
and they've got kind of like typical fantasy classes. It
kind of branches out a little bit from that, but
you'll have like a tank that's a lot of health
and you'll have a fighter that does this is more
damage focused.
Speaker 2: You'll have a cleric who deals people.
Speaker 4: And I've been playing it, uh the review in bargos today,
I will have a review in progress because I've not
beaten the game. Because it's massive. I am enjoyed, but
the the like steam page estimates two hundred plus hours
to beat this game.
Speaker 3: Oh my yeah. God. When I when I did the
preview for this games, I played well over a dozen
hours of it and I was you know, I interviewed
Edmund and Tyler about it, and at the time that
I started speaking to him, they had not beaten the
game yet. It's like because I I'd given pretty much
a content complete build and they were just polishing and
they said that they had put in roughly two hundred
hours or so, and they were like, they kept stressing, like,
you have barely scratched the surface of what this game
is from what you've played, which was saying a lot
because I really liked what I played at the time,
and are like, oh, it hasn't even like really opened
up yet, so.
Speaker 2: Take us through like the anatomy of a run. So, yeah,
it is a turn based RPG. You have four cats,
what is what does a run look like? In Eugenics?
Speaker 4: So starting off, when you get later into the game,
you'll get to pick which act you want to play.
So right now I have Act one and NAKA two.
I know there's at least also an Act three, and
you'll start off in whatever the starting area is, so
nac to one, you start off in the alley and
then there's a little map and it just has some
like events and combat encounter as you go to. It's
pretty typical of a roguelike if it's like, oh, you'll
start off and there's a combat, and then you can
pick do you want to go to the treasure chest
or do you want to go to the question Mark Icon,
and it'll be like the treasure chest will give you
an item, the question Mark Icon will be some kind
of event that's like a skill check for your cats,
because all your cats have different stats, so it'll be
like you can roll charisma to convince this person to
join your party, or your role constitution to not take
damage from this thing, et cetera. And they're all very
ridiculous creative. I have maybe gotten the same one a
few times, but some of them are very rare. Right
before is playing this, there was one Ah god, I
don't even know what the manga is called, but where
it's the guy. I think it's a junji eto maybe
where everyone has a hole that's shaped like them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the ami ami Gara fault. Uh yeah, this is
my hole.
Speaker 3: It was made for me.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I had a cat that had to roll intelligence to
resist going into a hole that was shaped just like it.
That's like an example of just the student. And like
the way this game goes fully possible cat would have
gone there, I would have lost them forever. Like it's
very crazy, very swingy. So you'll go through that. There's
like a mid mid area boss, end of area boss,
and then you'll get a branching path. And each act
has two routes, so the alley, you can go from
the alley into the sewers into the caves, or you
can go from the alley into the junk yard into
the graveyard. And the way it works is once you
unlock a biome for the first time, you have to
beat it, then go home.
Speaker 2: And then you'll unlock the next one.
Speaker 4: So to get through all of act one, it's a
minimum of five runs because you gotta beat up to
the farthest spot.
Speaker 2: And then come back.
Speaker 4: Okay, okay, I'm currently in Act two and I have
both routes fully unlocked, but I haven't beaten either of
those routes yet. And yeah, I mean the base base
impressions of the game.
Speaker 2: It's very fun. I like it a lot. I've played
like fifty something hours of it at this point. Damn.
Speaker 4: It is very dense. There's a lot of variation. I
have nine classes right now. Every time you pick a
class for your cat, you get a randomly generated starting
like passive ability and like active ability. So there's some
things that always have in common, but there's other things
where oh, and then the basic attack is the same
for every class, Like the Cleric always has a melee
attack that can heal allies but hurt enemies. But then
it might get one where it can heal ranged allies,
or it can cure d buffs, or it'll you know,
purify something.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 4: There's so many stuff, and combat itself is very there's rare.
I don't think I've had an encounter in this game
where it's like, oh, okay, I can.
Speaker 2: Co spy on this one. Like I don't have to
pay attention this one.
Speaker 4: Yeah, because it's always like you'll not pay attention to something,
or you'll a role will go like you'll miss something
that you got to hit, and then all of a sudden,
I just had one boss I thought where Just to
give an example of how how crazy all these systems
interact are. I have a tinkerer, which is like an
artificer class like builds equipment and stuff. When I walk
with him and land on a space, he does electric
damage in a t shape of everyone around him, which
is very inconvenient but sometimes nice for boss fights. I
have a tank who automatically attacks anyone that hurts an ally.
He'll like walk three steps and then attack them, which
means that if my tinkerer walks up to one of
my allies, it'll zapp that ally and then my tank
will run over and hit my tinkerer.
Speaker 1: And if it's really crazy, the tinker will like cats
like pawing at each other and finding each other. Yeah,
if the tinker is in a really bad position, he'll
slide back because I have a different cat because he's
moved again, and then my tank will hit him again.
Speaker 2: So it's kind of like nonsense, like that you have
to like.
Speaker 4: Did I just did one where the boss automatically attack
when you attack it, and it got in a crazy
chain that I was like, I'm just gonna go hit
it once and then ended up with like the half
of the boss's health was down, but then also like
one of my cats was down, and it's just like
it can get very chaotic if you're not paying attention.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I had a thing where I don't know if
it's the same bosses an early boss Charles, but it
was like a boss where every time you attacked it,
he automatically advanced on the unit that attacked it last.
And I had it because you're also like these cats
have like randomly assignabilities as well as like defects quote unquote,
so like disadvantages that could be used to your advantage
if you're clever. But I had an ability where I
basically could spawn like my own little ads. And because
this the nature of this boss, I had it set
up to where I had the ads attacked and he
would like advance towards the ADS. And I had two heads.
Speaker 2: What is ads?
Speaker 3: I like a little unit edition like a little AI.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I had two cats that could do that, and
so I had them. And because this boss is like
huge and he takes up like most of the kind
of like square playing field, so he doesn't really have
to move very far to kind of get to the
edge of it. I arranged my cats and like each
of the four corners and then had the two of
them with the ads on opposite sides, and basically he
kept getting hit by my little AI buddies and would
advance towards another cat. But then I had the other
two cats had overwatched style abilities, so he was always
within the overwatch, so he was pretty much just kidding, yeah,
like constantly moving but like couldn't do anything and basically
like without me really doing much. And I just and
I didn't plan for that. I just happened to have
those abilities because I rolled them and it just worked
out perfectly. And I remember telling Edna describing this fight
to Edmond, He's like, I've never seen that boss get
beat like that.
Speaker 4: Because I couldn't do that if I tried, because that's
a crazy coincidence that you got that stuff.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, Like he was just like but that was
kind of like to his point of like because it's
so systemic, like no run unfolds the same way, like
no individual battle un rolls unfold the same way, because
you it just depends on what you have on you
and just what the bosses can do and how those
systems interact with each other.
Speaker 4: Even even in the little we have a little discord
just for members of press they're reviewing the game moments
where people will be like, hey, I found this thing
where if I have this item equipped in this thing
going and this thing going, I have an infinite attacking
glitch where I can kill any unit instantly with a
million attacks. And they were like, I guess we'll patch that,
just like I don't. I don't know if they're patching
it or not, but they were like, it just happens
to work out that.
Speaker 2: It's yeah, anyway, this is.
Speaker 3: How common that could happen, Like if you got how
common would it be for those stars of Align? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Yeah, this sounds like so incredibly up my alley. I
fear for all future time that I would have spent
sleeping or doing human things.
Speaker 4: And you can play it forever because it's so freaking long.
The other things I want to mention are before I forget,
the music is really good. Yeah, every area has its
own backing track, and then when you get to the
final boss of the area, they add in vocals and you, guys,
the whole time the song has had lyrics and you
just haven't got to.
Speaker 2: Hear them yet.
Speaker 3: And the lyrics are really funny.
Speaker 2: They're pretty good.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 4: Then the in between runs, you have a house with
all your cats in it, and every time you go
to sleep, the cats will like breed and make new cats.
You'll gather new strays that come in, and there's very yeah,
there's very vendors. So yeah, I called eugenics, like eugenics
as in, you're gonna breed the cats for the best traits.
I have already made a decision that I'm like, if
any cat has a negative health score, I am just
not going to use them because health is like so
hard to come by. I'm just like, so I have
basically anytime I get a cat with a subpar health score,
I instantly donate it to one of the like vendors
you can donate to, or I specifically just don't let
them breed with the other cats.
Speaker 2: Like that's how That's how I'm probably.
Speaker 3: Also, can we mention that the breeding the little cinematica
plays like you are straight of watching these cats like
bang each other. That is quite funny. But also there's
like a lot of like secondhand embarrassment potential of someone
walking in on you as you're like watching these cats
get it on and you're.
Speaker 2: Like, what what is like a twitch mode? Right, Like
there's like a little thing.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So I have two I have two main hurdles with
this game.
Speaker 4: One of them is I personally don't think it's very funny,
and it tries very hard to be funny. There's a
lot of so for example, the cats breed every night
and there's just a humping animation, and I just don't
want to watch animated cats.
Speaker 3: I think they get birth like immediately, like you just
see them like, yeah, fetus just pop out.
Speaker 2: I think it's funny to say now, I think it's
funny because it is a shocking thing that's like, oh
my gosh, these cats are humping. It's crazy.
Speaker 4: Fifty hours into the game, I am sick of it.
There is an option in the menu though, where you
can just turn on like safe humping animation, and I
like them a lot more because they've they've done a
few of them where it's like, how would two cats
of a baby's that isn't humping. It would be like, oh,
they summoned a demon and it was their kitten, or
oh a cat stork came and delivered them a kitten.
Those are like I think those are more funny because
they're like they're creative. They subvert your expectations rather than
like the same cat humping animations every time.
Speaker 2: I just don't like that.
Speaker 4: Another thing I don't like is like personally not crazy
about poop jokes. I again, it's a thing that's like
if it's out of nowhere, I can the humor is
humor is often just comes down to surprise and subverting expectations.
So if it's like you think it's gonna be a
clean thing and there's poop, haha, funny whatever. There are
poop enemies, multiple sizes. There's several poop based abilities. There's
several fart based abilities. There's one defect called scatological where
if there's poop on the your cat good hat has
to go to it and eat it.
Speaker 2: Oh God, just the thing that I'm just like, that's
very binding of Isaac. It is like it's just it's
the thing that I'm like, I don't love it.
Speaker 1: I don't think it does make sense since this game
has been in development for over what.
Speaker 4: What for.
Speaker 3: Twenty twelve? Yeah, this version of the game has been
in development since twenty twenty, if we want to be
really technical.
Speaker 4: But yeah, so yeah, So it's just it's just the
thing I don't find particularly funny, and it's kind of
like a personal taste thing, but.
Speaker 2: That's fun.
Speaker 4: And then also like the dialogue that the NPCs say,
I feel like it's trying so hard to be funny
and a lot of times it feels like a first
pass at a joke that like they could have I
don't know, And that's all my taste. That's one of
the things that's keeping me from like really loving the game.
I'm like, if you just tried to be funny a
little bit less, or try to be gross a little
bit less, I'd be more important.
Speaker 3: Have you played other like Ben McMillan games, like do
you just like.
Speaker 4: Like Binding of Isaac is the one I have played
a little bit of, but not like a ton of,
And yeah, I'm not it's.
Speaker 2: Not really my my style of thing. Really.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: The other thing is that it's a Hurtle again.
Speaker 4: It was more of a personal preference than like a
slight on the game, but is very much not It
does not take the modern rogue like sensibility of every
failure is progress. It is very much like if you lose,
it is a failure and you're gonna lose progress. If
you die your idea, your inventory has cleared out, all
your cats die. Uh, you can pick like it is, yeah,
a little more proper. You can pick like one item
or some coins or whatever. But it creates this thing
where if you die a lot, you'll get in these
like losing feedback loops where after a while you'll like
have basically no cats in your house because they all
died and don't.
Speaker 3: Have animation anymore.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you can leave a run after beating a biome,
which is I think the what I would do if
I gotten like a I had a thing where I
lost like four runs in a row, and I was like,
Jesus Christ, I need to just take a different approach.
But what I would do is I would just beat
one biome or beat two biomes and then come back
rather than dying the same spot every every time. Because
the items make a huge difference. These are like you
got like a neck piece, ahead piece of I don't know,
a weapon, just a bunch of stuff that will like
adjust your stats, give you more abilities. You can make
really good builds and stuff out of this. Just having
a full inventory of items to equip to all your
cats is like the difference between easy mode and hard
mode basically, Like it's get you set up so much better.
Speaker 3: Because you have different gear pieces, like head pieces and
like chess pieces, like you can really kick them out.
Speaker 2: I'll tell you how. It really reminds me of Darkest
Dungeon in a way. Is it kind of struts like
that where you're kind of you still have a foundation
that you're building up, and you're going out and you're
coming back on runs and sometimes you can lose a
lot of resources that you've invested in. You need to
like do some smaller runs and build those resources back
up to attempt the longer runs. Uh. Yeah, it's it's
similar to that.
Speaker 4: I would say, it's less okay, Yeah, the resources in
this case, yeah, being cats and gear.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, when you win a run, your cats come home
and they're like retired cats. You can't take them on
a run again, but they can breed with other cats,
and like you, if they have good stats, they can
like pass those on and stuff.
Speaker 2: What else was I going to say?
Speaker 4: Oh, A good example of like when gear can really
make a difference is act too. The first area is
the desert, which is tough because every combat encounter after
you finish the run, your cat's heal a little bit
based on like their constitution's score. You'll heal like if
they've got like a max age be of like twenty
four of the hill like six or something like that.
In the desert, it's really hot and nobody heals automatically.
And also all heels are reduced by one, so the
first place you're in it's way harder. But if you
have a bottle of water, then it mitigates that for
that encounter, so you heal a little bit, and then
you can heal up at the end of a run.
You can buy bottles of water in the desert, So
the strat to do is do a run just to
the desert, buy bottles of water specifically to do that,
and then the next time you go run, all of
your cats of water they can drink, so you can
manage your health a lot better. And then I have
an item right now that it's like a hose that
puts a streak of like a river down the middle
of a map, and if you step in that with
an empty bottle of water automatically gets filled up. So
there's stuff like that where it's like there's always a
strategy to work around, there's always another way to play.
Speaker 2: But it is not a Hades or.
Speaker 4: I don't know, there's there's not like XP. You're slowly
building up to be like, ah, now, my cats are
all a little bit better because.
Speaker 3: I guess you're only taking them out once, like a
cat can only do a full run once and then
they retire.
Speaker 2: If you if you win one of the paths with
a class of cat, it permanently unlocks a new ability
that goes into the pool, which is cool. One of
my favorite classes is the Druid.
Speaker 4: You start off with a crow familiar and then you
have a bunch of like uh uh supportabilities, which is cool.
And I beat one of the routes as it and
I unlocked a bear familiar so I can just summon
a bear and it's massive and.
Speaker 2: It's really good and cool. I really want to play
this game. Yeah, I could badly want to play this
game right now.
Speaker 4: Ye man, Yeah, I'm I'm I'm probably I probably won't
beat the game.
Speaker 2: When I write the review.
Speaker 4: I think I just want to make sure I'm I've
played all of the biomes at the very least, like
gotten into.
Speaker 2: Act three properly.
Speaker 4: I don't think I'm going to do a whole two
hundred hours, because I think I'll probably once I see
Act three in what it is, I'll have a more
firm idea of like my my grasp on the game overall.
Speaker 2: But yeah, it's a great game.
Speaker 4: I mentioned my caveats with it, but I think this
is this is going to be one of those games
that people get really into, sink a lot of time into,
and I it's definitely one that I think, as as
a staff Game Informer should be looking out for.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Like, I've really enjoyed what I played a bit
for the feature in a game, and like I said,
I put a good amount of time in it, and
just knowing like, oh, that's like nothing compared to like
what the full scope of his game is was like
exciting and intimidating at the same time. It also has
made me grateful that this comes out so early in
the year because I have like in terms of just
pure like end of YEW discussions, It's like, Okay, I
got this full year to get through.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like a game that'll run great on Steam Deck.
Speaker 4: Oh, thank you for mentioning that. So I have it
on steam Deck.
Speaker 2: It does run well. It runs better than on my computer.
Actually I don't have a great computer.
Speaker 4: The one thing with it is that it is not
it's not like built for controller. So you can use
the controller if you use a joystick to like navigate
a cursor around, but it's not like when you would
just move the joystick and you would be able to
like select squares or like just scroll like you would
have an Xbox menu. Sure that said, I played a
lot of it on the Steam Deck, so it's fine.
Speaker 3: But I believe I know Edmund mentioned controller support was
something that they were looking into at the time that
I talked to it, as well as like other platforms,
because this game is only coming out at PC at
launch got so yeah, hopefully at least controller support isn't
too far down the line, but it is something that
they are like investigating.
Speaker 2: I guess, yeah, to be clear, what it works perfectly fine,
with the controller.
Speaker 3: It's just not clicking.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you're just clicking cats in command, so totally well cool, Well, Marcus,
do you want to kind of take us home Neo
three before we get out of here?
Speaker 3: Speaking of I don't know, surprisingly long games that I
haven't finished yet, and I had to write a review
and progress off Neo three. Uh this game spoiler alert.
So far, I have not finished it, but it is
very good and I'm having a good time with it.
As a as someone that I've played a lot of
the previous two Neo games, but believe it or not,
I never finished them, and not because really any of
the games, so I just for whatever reason, cause I
never had to play them for like work reasons. They
were always just like on my own leasure, and then
I always got kind of pulled away from them from
other things, and I always wondered, like, I don't know,
is there's I like these games? But is there is
it missing something where I haven't just felt compelled to
go back and and just like finished them off. Whereas
with this game, within the first like few hours, I
would say I already came to the like my biggest
metric for playing anything for work, But especially for a review.
Is if I were not obligated to play this, would
I keep playing it? And I already knew it was
like one hundred percent, Yes, this is really good. So
this is like what I appreciate about this game is
that it's much different than Neo one and two because
I think with the Neo series and sort of the
sort of like Neo adjacent games that Team Ninja has done,
is that they've all kind of followed the Neo blueprint,
like whether you're looking at like Woolong or to a
somewhat lesser extent of Rise of the ronin where it
is the kind of like you know, like Fashion play,
faster paced SOULS like game that's really loot heavy and
really systems heavy, like a lot. It's like a very
number crunchy series, like even more so than like from
software souls likes, because there's so much loot that you're managing,
and it's like they throw loot at you constantly, so
you're always in the menu being like, Okay, what's the
difference between this sword and an identical sword? Because it's
not just oh, the attacks higher, but they all have
like individual like traits where you're like, oh, this one
makes my stamina to go fashion, but then this one
really enhances this magic spell that I like to use,
so maybe I should use that, And then trying to
figure out like what's the good combination of the loop
to kind of like emphasize whatever build that I'm trying
to make, and also your main there's like twelve different
main weapons you can use, and they all have their
own individual sort of like move sets.
Speaker 4: Like it.
Speaker 3: It's one of those games that, like the Sikos of Neo,
when you really want to dive into it, there's so
much to like chew on. This game is still that.
But what I like is one they give you sort
of like almost doubling down on that is that you
have a new style, like they have like styles now
where you have Samurai these like stances kind of no,
it's pretty much like you just turn into a different character.
It's it almost feels like so like you have Samurai style,
which is the traditional Neo gameplay experience, where you have
four weapon stances like high, medium, low, and you know,
regardless of wch of the like dozen weapons you can use.
But it's a lot like a little slower, a little heavier,
a little bit more deliberate combat, and then with the
button you can swap to the new Ninja style where
you just turn into just a straight up shanoby, and
it changes the play style dramatically because now you're a
lot faster, it's focused more on evasion than just blocking
like the Samurai style instead of the kind of like
key pulse, which in Neo is sort of the like
like basically you can recharge your stamina early with a
tying button press while you're in the middle of a combo.
Like that's kind of like that's kind of always kind
of define the Neo combat, whereas the Shnoby instead of
doing that, you have this thing called MISS, which is
basically just this like really quick evede that positions you
behind the enemy because the ninja has does better damage
when you attack people from behind, like like really good
backstab damage. So, like the rhythm of combat with the
Ninja is that you're doing these crazy fast paced combos
and then every now and then hitting MISS, so that
you're just constantly shifting behind them, so they're always trying
to like hit you, but you're always just like out
maneuvering them. Uh, And it feels really good to do that,
especially for me because I generally prefer faster paced characters
and action games, or really any game in general, if
you give me any option, like I prefer like mobility
to like strength. So because of that, I've like, like
the Ninja class or style, whatever you want to call it,
is like basically my default style. Like I still use
the Shanoby style because there's times where it's, you know,
depending on the enemy, it's like maybe I need a
little bit more of a deliberate, power focused approach, But
I found that the Ninja style is for my play
style works well. And what's nice about Neo three, and
I asked this of the directors when I did the preview,
is that if you wanted to, you could play this
entire game with only one style. Like the design to
where like we're not going to force you to pick
one or the other. There isn't like a boss fight
where you're like, Okay, this is clearly a Ninja boss fight.
It's purely to your preference, which plays into what Neo
as a series has always done really well, is kind
of giving you an overwhelming amount of agency to kind
of tackle the game however you want. So the two
styles each have their own independent loadouts, which is a
lot because, like a mentioned before, Leo Mio is such
a loot heavy game where you're equipping your character head
to toe and every piece of equipment. So now you
have like two different ones Like when you swap to Ninja,
he has his own chest, armor plate, his own weapon,
sets his own items, and then you know, so you
can have basically two different bills at the same time.
So it is more the manage between the two. But
what is nice is that if you're someone like me
that like is in the middle ground of like, yeah,
there's sometimes I want to go in there and really
look at the manutia of what this chest plate offers.
But at the times it's just like I don't want
to stand as many too long. I whant to get
back out there cool stuff. There's a button that you
can hit where you can auto like like kind of
like optimize, but you can optimize based on do you
want a light build, do you want a heavy bill,
do you want a medium build? And then whatever gear
fits in that will just give you the best versions
of what you have to give you that if you
want a fat roll, we'll give you the best fat
rolling items. If you want to be as light as
possible based on what you have, this is going to
give you the best light like option that you have
available to you. So I use that a lot, and
then for like little things. It only affects your armor.
Your weapons, you still have to independently choose. But that's fine.
That's only like two slots and your ranged weapon. But yeah,
the Ninja style is so much fun, guys. It is
like I have like Ninja with like dual swords right now,
and I'm like flipping around like slicing people like a
like miro Le Leonardo and Ninja turtles and I've unlocked
so like each style has like individual skill trees that
have kind of like you can unlock new inherent abilities,
which for the Ninja is their ninja tools and their
ninja like magic. So instead of the four stances that
I mentioned for a Samurai style, for the Ninja, it's
just this litany of Ninja tools that you could equip there.
So it could be like sure again Kuni, or it
could be like magic like chains, there is a Kuoni
would chain like maybe uh he popped me with a
reference I wasn't expecting, or like I have one where
like my guy like will punch the ground and like
a wall of rocks will pop up, and it's used
that you can use it to like block enemies as
they charge at you, they'll just run into the rock
wall and get stunned, and then you can like wail
on them or like stop projectiles. Like there's a lot
to play with, and you can customize the button inputs
as well for everything that you do, so this game
and which Ninja Guy and also lets you do where
you can kind of like turn off button inputs, so
like you can have this game be as complicated or
as simple as you want. If you just want this
to be a game where you just want to hit
triangle and square over and over and that's it, then
you could do that. But if you want it to
almost feel like more like a fighting game where you're like, oh,
what is my down triangle gonna do? Because there's like
three different moves I can assign to a down triangle,
Like you can just literally just build your character to
do exactly what you want them to do. And it
is a lot of menu management, but I think if
you sit down and take the time to really look
at like, Okay, I just unlocked this other new ability,
and they you know, they always give you the little
video preview clip of what it does, and you go like, oh,
that looks cool and that might actually go well with
this other ability to have, Like I could probably change
these two together. You can do that. One of my
favorite moves I have is I one of my like
jumping down attacks is this like helicopter blade thing my
duel swords, where like he'll just like my Ninjo, she'll
jump up and then just spin her blades around and
just come down like a helicopter and just like chop
everyone underneath. And it's really fun to pull off. So
the Ninja sounds Oh go ahead.
Speaker 2: Eric, Yeah, I'm just gonna say, would you say that
this is then for like the Neo Sickos, Like like
this is somebody who's played a lot of the Neo
games and really wants that kind of expanded tool option,
or you think it feels approachable enough that like the
three shouldn't scare off a newcomer.
Speaker 3: I mean it is for the Neo Sikos, because that's
that stuff has always kind of been there, but it's
just like blown up even more here. But in terms
of like purely narrative. This is like an independent thing,
Like there's no like, there's minimal connection to the other
two games outside of a few characters that like oh,
that guy was a Neo two. But even then, they
have like a really nice glossary to has like complete
summaries of the first two games if you want to
read those, as well as like here's all these characters,
here's what they do, is their history. But like buy
and large, you don't need like they made it a
point to be like this is not you do not
need familiarity with those two games to play this, and
a lot of that. I think it's because it's also
a time travel story, which seems to be a thing
this year between this and Covein. It's like let's make
souls like where you're jumping around periods of time. The
other big thing with Neo three that I really love
is that it is not open world. I believe their
official term is open field.
Speaker 2: Where the open field open zone, that sort of thing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like every era of history has its own special
or own individual map that is gigantic, and the map
is divided into different regions and pretty much you can
spend upwards of like fifteen to twenty hours if you
really wanted to uncover everything in an individual map, and
there seems to be several of them, or at least
three maybe so kind of.
Speaker 2: Give you that open world feeling, but you're not. They're
just not connected.
Speaker 3: They're not connected, but they're big enough to where like
one map could would be a full game in a
different Yeah.
Speaker 4: That's open world. Like people said Assassin's Creed two is
like open world and you're you know, warping between different
cities that are all open. But I think I think
they don't need to put a caveat. I would just
say on equivalently, that's open world.
Speaker 3: I think it's more like by today's definition because it's
as to three to I think at the time that
was open world, but like now we would be like, well,
it's not all conducted, so I don't know, but like,
but yeah, I agree with the charge R was, like,
these maps are big enough to where like even if
they're not all like, I can't go And it's really
because of the premise because like, well, one map is
set five hundred years before this other map, so I
guess I couldn't just walk over there. But like you
know it's they're big enough to where they feel like,
what worse, You aren't just wandering freely, you don't.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you're uncovering secrets. You can do well. This is
like a good rainy day topic for us, I think,
because I would say that I agree with you all
to a point. But then also games like elden Ring
or Breath of the Wild that basically said we are
it's one giant thing. You can get from here to there,
or like Skyrim as another example, you can get from
here to there. You can see it, you can climb it.
Kind of like reconfigured what we thought of open world
as and led to a lot of explaining stuff like
Pokemon Legends Rcus's Open Zone, even though it's also very
open world in the way it's approached. So that might
be a good rainy day topic for us as.
Speaker 3: Sure, and some of its semantics too. But yeah, ultimately
the way that Neo's open world works, I really like it.
I'm struggling to think if I've seen another game tackling
open world like this, because it is like the perfect
middle ground between the overly guided, overly icon heavy maps
of you know, a stereotypical UBI Soft game, we'll say
and the Breath of the Wild Elder and ring approach
of we're not gonna tell you anything. You're it's just
go out there and see what you find and you know,
have fun. Where when you enter a new area, like
the map is blank, Like you pull up the map
doesn't tell you anything, it's just shrouded. All you see
is like the main objective icon in some random direction.
But there are exploration rewards where the more you uncover
on your own, you're ticking off these little uh like
objectives where it's like, oh, you found this many shrines
which are like your fast travel safe points, or you
found this many I don't know chess or like enemy camps. Well,
now because of that, we're gonna give you little passive
stat boots to like, hey, if you uncover this much
of the map, you're gonna have plus two attack for
the rest of the time that you're here. And in
the game. That's as hard as this, that's like incredibly valuable.
And then it's like, but if you get to like
tier two of exploration, we're gonna give you plus four defense.
And also we're gonna gradually reveal icons on the map,
but only the items that you were in the vicinity
of but you missed. So it's like, hey, you were
in a little town and you found like three Kodama spirits,
but you missed the fourth one. Well, if you uncover
more of the map on your own, we're gonna tell
you where that fourth one was, if you would like
the double back and just go get it. And I
love that because it's sort of like it's not telling
you where to go, like you're still sort of like
finding things on your own. But also by the time
you're kind of you filled up enough of the map
and you're probably ready to move on. If you're a
person that just like as a completionist and you're like, oh,
I want to just go get the things I didn't
find on my own, you'll look at the map and
all of a sudden it's like full of baldy icons, like, oh, man,
I guess I missed all those when I was there
the first time, So now I can just fast travel
back to its own and just go, you know, do
clean up. And I think that's really cool. Like and
also because you're also getting the stat bumps of like
oh I got plus two attack, I got plus four defense,
like you're improving your character just by exploring, Like it
is like such a strong hook to just go find
things because again, this game's hard, because these games are hard,
and so like any advantage I can get in battle helps,
and that's like one of only like several systems that
are all designed to like make your character stronger. Because
you also have god, you have your normal progression of
like you know, killing enemies, earning experience, leveling up, putting
whatever experience points into like your stats, like oh, I want,
you know, more stamina, more health, more, I don't know, intellect,
And depending on the weapon, your tie, your use, it'll
make that it'll make you better with that weapon. You'll
see down there like oh I'm using dual swords, and
my dual swords I go up when I pump it
into intelligence, so maybe I'll focus on that. But also
you have titles where it's basically like doing little feats
and then so it's like, uh, like I don't know,
like Ninja and Shanobi have their own title category so
to be like, hey, you stealth killed ten enemies, here's
some points to go into your Ninja feats. And then
when you put points into your ninja feeds. There's like
four things you can but points into to be like hey,
when you dodge now it takes up less stamina, or
when you attack in the air, it does more damage.
It's like stuff like that. And then there's like multiple
categories of those based on combat and exploration and so
like you're earning those passively in the background too, just
by doing things.
Speaker 2: Uh that's fine.
Speaker 4: Yeah, those feels significant, like you're doing more damage in
the air. Is it like, oh, five percent more damage
in the air or is it like, oh, I.
Speaker 3: Can't Yeah, it feels like it's to me, especially if
it's something that you know you use a lot, which
again goes back to how you decide to build your
move set of like oh, I got this really cool
air move that I do find myself using a lot,
so maybe I do want this to do like any
bit more damage. Well, it's like welcomed. But also with
stuff like item drops and equipment drops, you can make
you can raise the percentage on how often that happens
through your titles or like oh, alixirs, which are basically
your st flags or flast like, oh, I can increase
the drop rate of those, or I can increase the
healing effectiveness of those just by again, just by doing things,
so you're earning those, you're also finding God, there's so
much to get into with this. There's there's also your
I mentioned before, the skill trees that you have for
both your inherent traits as a ninja and samurai, but
also every weapon has their own skill trees tied to it.
So this is very much a game where you need
to pick one or two weapons and stick with them
because you have to learn your weapons. So in the beginning,
and every neo game has been like this, we're in
the beginning where you choose your weapon. They give you
a chance to kind of pick each one up, swinging
around a bit, see if you like the feel of it,
and then kind of go from there. You'll always have
access to every weapon because every enemy drops every weapon,
so you can change any time. And what's nice is
that you can respect any time with no cause. So
if you get really invested in like a regular you know, Katana,
and then you've pick up a weapon where you're like, oh,
I got this like chain sickle thing that's super fun,
I'm gonna and then you realize I'm just using this
and I'm not really using the Samurai sword anymore. I'm
gonna respect all my points that I put into that,
and I'm just gonna put them all into the cool
chain thing, because I think this is my new thing now,
and you can do it as many times as you want.
And I've done that multiple times. I've just kind of been,
you know, sampling the different weapons and seeing what I
want to stick with cool so you can dig into that.
You can also unlock like passive abilities with like another thing.
I'm trying to remember the name of it, but basically,
the ninja and samurai have their own sort of like
ability meter where you have these sort of like passive
perks that you can turn on as many as you
want if you have enough of a meter left. So
like each passive perk takes up a portion of the meter.
So like, if your meter's ten points every and you
have like an ability that takes up five points, then
you've used the path your meter. And you can find
items that raise the limit of this meter that are
like worth their weighting gold, and you're all over the
place you find them in chest sometimes enemies drop them,
but again it's another thing that incentivizes you to be like,
I probably want to open every chest because if I
find another thing that raises the cap of my ninja skills,
I want that because then some a lot of the
cool passives there are like some cool ones where like
there's one that's like, hey, every time you dodge it,
so like you're fighting yokay in these games, and when
they summon them in the neo games, they sometimes leave
like a little basically like demonic field where if you're
fighting them in this demonic field, it makes your stamina,
it makes it tougher to regenerate, so you'll get tired faster,
and the only way to dissipate that is to do
your key pulse move in it, which again is like
the time sort of like button press to replenish your stamina.
But with the Ninja, it's like, oh, one of the
perks I turned on was hey, if you just do
a basic dodge well in there, it'll turn it on.
It'll get rid of that field, so you don't have
to do the like harder button plant. So I'm like, well,
I'm gonna have that on all the time. And it's
like basically things that are designed to sort of like
break the game's ruled a bit, so if you can
like just finding not only more of those skills, which
again you find those just from chest enemies whatever, on
top of the thing that raises the quoto, so you
can have more of those unlocked, like you're like, oh,
I want to look everywhere and find these, because I'm
finding some like wild stuff that I could have easily missed.
So it's it makes it is like one of the
most rewarding sort of like open world experiences I played before,
because it feels like everything is your rewarded constantly for
just looking around, and it feels like everything is out
to make you better in some way, and it's a
really nice compliment to like how tough the enemies are.
But also I would say this is probably the most
approachable Meal game for the reasons that elden Ring is
like the most approachable Soul's game in the sense that
if you hit.
Speaker 2: A wall, you just go somewhere elsewhere else Yeah, right,
you're like, oh cool.
Speaker 3: Yeah. And also every map area tells you like recommended
level too, so if you go to a region, they're like, okay,
my main mission is in this region. It's saying maybe
you want to be fifty seven if you're here, which
is like a loose number because it sort of depends
on like not only just the level, but like how
good you are, which is what I not. Like you
can do a degree of like number grinding, but you
still have to like read patterns and like I've had
bosses kill me that were technically lower level than me
because they just outfoxed me. So you still have to
like learn your class, learn your weapons, figure out how
to counter like all that stuff still matters on top
of just I have higher numbers than you. But yeah,
and there's other systems I don't even touched on. I
know we're running out of time because there's like side Quest,
there's blacksmithings Quest, there's there's so much in this lot.
There's a lot, and there's always a lot.
Speaker 1: With Neo it is a dense boil it down then yeah,
if this is if you are like a Souls fan,
if you're a person who likes a Soul's game and
you're looking at at NEO three, like what would you
say would be the thing that puts it over?
Speaker 2: Like like what is the reason to come to NEO three?
If you've played elden Ring or something and your interest
in this, what is the X factor that defines it?
Speaker 3: I would say combat wise, And I would say this
is true of the Neo series in general. If you
like a faster paced souls like, Neo has always been
great for that. Like Neo was one of the first,
like non from software Souls likes that were good, like
they got in on the trend really early team Ninja
that is where but they also managed to stand be
the most like unique before anyone else because a lot
of people just copy the kind of deliberate combat of
Souls likes where they took their Ninja guid and experience
and blended it into like the Soul's formula where it's
a lot, like I said, faster pace, a bigger emphasis
on loots. So if you're a loot person, this is
like the series for you, And it's just like because
of how fast paced it is and how technical to
combat can get, it's like as much fun to wat
to watch as it is to kind of pull off
the stuff that you can do, especially again, once you
learn your weapon well, which I think this game even
more so than from software game kind of demands a
mastery of your equipment better because there's just so much
you can dig into there. But with this particular game,
the open world stuff that I mentioned before, I think
it does like a really good job of not only
making the open world like compelling enough to explore just
from like a visual and like like I guess like
narrative design thing, but also just all the rewards they
throw at you constantly. And the one thing I'll throw
in real quick that I forgot to mention that's like
huge is that there's these destinations called crucibles, which is
kind of like tied to the plot, where like there
are these kind of like demonic versions of the map
that you can enter and explore, and they kind of
like like they basically take you to like a hellish
version of like a certain area, and inside the crucibles,
it's like harder, like the enemies are harder. They're unique,
and you can also find these unique weapons called crucible
weapons that are like stronger and you can get like
you can learn new abilities from them that you can
like gain permanently if you use them enough. But also
they have like the downside where if you take damage
while wielding a crucible weapon, it like lowers your overall
health until you're able to like get to a shrine
or like deal damage back. So like they're fun risk
reward things. But also like I like the crucibles because
they're kind of like nice, nice breaks from like the
general open world. And also like the challenge is raised
up a bit whereas like, oh, okay, everything in here
hits a little harder. It looks cooler visually, just it
literally looks like you're just like fighting your way through hell.
And yeah, but yeah, those are like pretty crucial to
like the plot of this game, and I think they're
like another new addition to like the myriad of other
things that the kind of like the map and world
has to offer it. But like I said, I have
probably like a good halfway through it. I have a
ways to go, but I'm having a blast so far.
Like it's a game that I you guys ever played
especially open world games for a review, where you're like, man,
if I wasn't on the clock, I just want to
sit down and just like find everything, And I know
I don't. I can't kind of do that at the
run pass and stuff like oh there's a cool side
quest here, just this guy talk to me. I don't
have time to do that. I got a bullet towards
the main objective as much as I can. But yeah,
like I don't often feel that when open world games,
but this is when I was like, man, I'm gonna
clean up everything. I want to see all the abilities
that I missed and some of those chests and stuff.
It's fun.
Speaker 1: Man, Yeah, you're I mean, it sounds overwhelming a bit,
but it is. Yeah, it it sounds like if that's
what you're in the mood.
Speaker 2: For, then it delivers.
Speaker 1: So I I will pay attention to the three I
kind of it wasn't on my radar at all. Some
of the stuff you said today is like, huh, I'm
gonna keep my eye on it.
Speaker 3: You know. Yeah, I will say it does as it's
good of a job. It probably can do kind of
ease you into its systems, Like there's okay, pretty like
pretty edtorials, and there's also like there's whole systems of
this game to do not unlock until like fifteen twenty
hours in Okay.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like they let you get a nice carrot on
the stick to know that's a that's how it kind
of trickles out like major stuff too, all right, well, I, uh,
while you were talking, Marcus, I got cent of eugenics code.
Speaker 2: So it's a podcast. The podcast needs to end now,
so and check that out.
Speaker 3: Oh I did too, I just know I just checked slack.
I don't even remember ask for a one, but I mean,
I guess they assumed like, well, you did the preview,
you probably want to play this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well cool.
Speaker 1: Well, hey listeners out there, thank you for listening. If
you're watching on YouTube, thanks for sticking with us. Of course,
like we said at the top of the show, be
sure to pick up a copy of Game Informer. Head
over to Game Informer dot com slash subscribe and you
can get access to ten issues delivered to your mailbox
every year, and if you're international, you can get the
digital versions through a cheaper subscription, and of course find
us on newsstands.
Speaker 2: Uh in the US and globally.
Speaker 4: My my future father in law was like, I haven't
seen I have't seen any of Charles's magazines on the
newsstands and Barnes and Noble, and my fil was like, oh,
that's weird, and he's like yeah, flying off, he was like, yeah,
I haven't been into Barnes and Noble and I was like, Oh,
that that would be it. You never looked at the
store where they are, so that would do it. You
walk into the Barns and Noble.
Speaker 3: Magazine. I'm having a hard time. Just did they still
milk anymore? I haven't seen a while, I haven't been.
Speaker 2: Best by.
Speaker 1: All Right, Well we're gonna call it there. Thanks for
listening to everybody, thanks for tuning in, and we'll catch
you next week.
Speaker 2: Goodbye.