Speaker 1: This week on the Game in Former show, Brian Jay
takes a deep dive into his Ninja Guiden for cover story.
Speaker 2: Ninja Guiden three came out in twenty twelve, and it
just seemed like this franchise was dead for all intents
and purposes. If you haven't familiarized yourself with Ninja Guiden four,
it's just this super intense action game. The original Ninja
Gaiden on Xbox, at least the original three D Ninja
Gaiden kind of served as like this defining entry in
the action genre. I traveled to Tokyo, visited Platinum Game,
spent a full day in the studio, which was really
cool to be in, kind of like the building where
all of these incredible games were born out of.
Speaker 1: Emmy nominated television writer and former Nintendo localization writer Mike
Drucker dives into his thoughts on UFO fifty Metal Gear,
Solid three Snake Eater on three DS.
Speaker 3: And I texted Mike.
Speaker 4: I was like, Mike, this is this is almost unplayable,
Like this is like you have to use the face
buttons to aim and answers.
Speaker 1: A couple of questions for us about as time working
at Nintendo.
Speaker 5: A lot of the things that I was assigned to were,
you know, punching up certain scenes where they wanted more jokes,
or things like writing the idle text. You know, writing
the idols were basically trophies in the game, So getting
to write the text for that was super fun because
they basically let you do whatever you want to know,
so that was super fun.
Speaker 1: We also talked Shanobi, Art of Vengeance, the Rogue Prints
of Persia, Luminous Rise, and a new Rogue Light FPS
void Breaker. The more that you increase your fov slider
in the graphics setting, the faster you move, and there
are other ones that are the higher your frame rate
is the higher damage you do in the game. There's
really like game breaking things that are really exciting. The
podcast is about to begin. If you haven't yet, hit
that subscribe button. Like the video and consider picking up
a Game Informer magazine print subscription. Hey, everybody, Welcome back
to the Game Informer Show, a weekly podcast covering the
video game industry. Join us every week for a discussion
with the latest gaming news, reviews, and exclusive reveals, alongside
Game and Former staff and special guests from around the industry.
I'm one of your hosts today Alex van Aiken and
Today I'm joined by Kyle Hilliard.
Speaker 4: Hello, Kyle, Hey, I got ahead of myself.
Speaker 3: I was excited.
Speaker 1: Oh you're you're excited. I get it. We've got We've
got a pack show. We're gonna be talking about our
Ninja Guidan for cover story, the Rogue Prince of Persia,
lumit Us Arise, and a lot more, alongside Charles Hart.
How you doing Charles?
Speaker 6: Hello, I've played a little bit of one of those games.
Speaker 1: Hell, yeah, that's what that's what we're talking about mainly
here as as like as a fun guy. Yeah, fulfilling
your usual role. We are glad to have you here.
Bryan Shay, Welcome back to the show.
Speaker 2: How you doing, Hey, I'm doing good. I recently rewatched
eight Mile for the first time in like almost twenty years,
and now I have his Terrible Sweet Home Alabama freestyle
stuck in my head for the.
Speaker 1: Last Yeah, that's that's amazing.
Speaker 4: But also of gutten four, So we're gonna' that's.
Speaker 1: The big one. That's the big one. We'll get into
that in just a moment. We're also joined by Emmy
nominated television writer and producer Mike Drucker, Howda, and Mike.
Speaker 5: I'm doing great. Thank you very much, Thank you for
having me.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, I've been following your work for a while.
I everybody here has.
Speaker 4: It's funny to be led with the TV stuff when
there's like, oh yeah, I was.
Speaker 1: Going to get into it. I was going to get
into you know, known for Full Frontal with Samantha be
the Tonight Show. You worked at Nintendo as a localization
writer for a while on titles like Zelda, Skyward Sword
and Kiddick Risk. And you have a book out right, Mike.
Speaker 6: Yep.
Speaker 5: It's called Good Game, No Rematch. It's available hardcover, digital,
and audio, and it's basically a book about me growing
up with games and how I've humiliated myself throughout.
Speaker 3: My life with it.
Speaker 1: That's awesome, It really good.
Speaker 4: It's really good to hop in there. I really liked
that book a lot.
Speaker 3: Mike.
Speaker 4: I don't know if I've talked to you directly about
your book, but it's like, it's like David Sedaris liked
video games, is kind of how I feel about.
Speaker 5: That's a huge complement and I appreciate that.
Speaker 6: And he's also in the issue.
Speaker 1: Also, I was gonna say, yeah, yeah, you wrote a
feature for us in this new issue of Game Informer.
What was the feature about Mike?
Speaker 5: Well, in my book, I have a whole chapter about
King's Quest and how much I love Roberta Williams. And
so Kyle was kind enough to come to me and
be like, do you want to talk to her for
an article? And I was like, yes, I would like
that very much, and so I got to have multiple
phone conversation with Roberta Williams. If you don't know who
she is, she was a massive, massive, massive video game
designer in the eighties up till about the mid late nineties.
She created King's Quest. She basically kicked off a lot
of the big Sierra games, like even though she didn't
make Space Quest or Police Quest, like, her games kind
of were the reason those got made. And she, you know,
did games like Phantasmagoria like she was one one of
I would say, like one of the early game designers
to have like a big name across the box where
it's say ROBERTA Williams King's Quest.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's it's incredible. I'm so excited to read that feature.
I actually normally in the cycle, i'm a little more
involved with you know, knowing what's going in the issue
ahead of time. It's just been so busy around here.
There's a lot of a lot of cool stuff in
that issue I haven't had a chance to look at yet,
which brings me to my point. If you're listening, you
can support us today by going to GameInformer dot com
slash subscribe, picking up a print magazine subscription, or if
you're overseas and you'd like to support us and read
a lot of great and well researched articles about games.
We've got a digital version as well for a cheaper price,
so go check that out. GameInformer dot com slash subscribe.
You still have time to place your order for the
Ninja Guide in for cover, and we've got a lot
of great ones coming down the pipeline as well. But
we will get right into the show. We won't wait
any longer. Brian, you have been playing Ninja Gaiden four
as part of his cover story. I'm very curious about this.
Can you tell us about it?
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure. So usually, Alex, you get to tag
along on a lot of these covered story trips. This
was kind of a unique one in that I went
solo and so I'm the only person who had a
chance at least on the game and former staff to
check out Ninja Gaiden four. And you know, I have
a long history with the Ninja Gaiden franchise. I remember
going over to my neighbor's house and playing the original
NES game, so dating all the way back to like,
you know, the early nineties, I have a history with
Ninja Gaiden, and I played the Dead or Alive games
as they came out, and then like Ninja Gaiden kind
of faded into the background of like being a dormant franchise,
and then when they you know, revitalized it as this
three D action title for the original Xbox just called
Ninja Guiden, and then two and three came out in
subsequent years. I remained a fan, although I'm not like
the biggest fan of three. I think I gave it
a pretty scathing review on another website that I wrote
for before Game Informer, But it's been dormant for over
a decade now, you know it was. I think Ninja
Guiden three came out in twenty twelve, and it just
seemed like this franchise was dead for all intents and purposes.
Like I think there was like the Yaiba Ninja Guiden
game that came out in twenty fourteen.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, Ninja's right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so its it. But that was twenty fourteen. I
think it was pretty critically bashed, and you know, we
haven't heard a peep from that franchise since, and it's
been We've gotten a few dead or a live games
here or there, but nothing like mainline Ninja Guiden.
Speaker 1: And this year and this year, yeah, this year we're
getting three.
Speaker 2: Yeah. This year it's been like I've called it the
Year of the Ninja since like this year started coming
into like focus because we got Ninja Guiden Black two,
which was you know, an Unreal Engine five remaster of
Ninja Guiden two, which came back out or came out
back in like the three sixty. We've gotten Ninja Guiden
Rage Bound, we got Assassin's Creed Shadows earlier this year.
We had Shanoby Art Avengeance, which I reviewed for US
this week and we can talk about that a little
bit later. And we got Ghost of Yote coming out
next month. So that all has been like this giant
like re emergence of Ninja games, and it's been really
cool because, like you know, ninjas are incredibly fun to
play as because they have just this incredible suite of
abilities and like tools and weapons at their disposal, and
it's it turns out you can make a wide variety
of games based on ninja's Like Assassin's Creed Shadows has
so little in common with Ninja guid And four, and
Ninja gid And four has so little in common with
something like Shanoby Art a Vengeance. So it's like the
diversity that we're getting even within like the subgenre of
like ninja action games is incredible and having spent you know,
time with all of them, I think, aside from Ghost
of Yote, at this point, I think it's been an
incredibly strong year for fans of ninjas, and it last
release in that category for this year in terms of
at least like mainstream is going to be Ninja Gaiden four.
So it kind of feels fitting to have like this
be like our end cap of like, all right, we're
gonna kind of put an exclamation point on this year
of the Ninja by putting Ninja Gaiden four on the cover.
And you know, if you haven't familiarized yourself with Ninja
Gaiden four, it's just this super intense action game. The
original Ninja Gaiden on Xbox, at least, the original three
D Ninja Gaiden kind of served as like this defining
entry in the action genre for difficulty and like reflex based,
skill based action combat. And it was kind of like
the influential difficult action game before Soul's likes existed, So
it was at that time it was like heavy combo emphasis,
using like a wide range of tools and you know,
defeating a group of enemies or a boss in like
the most stylish and fast paced manner possible.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think of that and Anna Musha as those
early titles.
Speaker 2: Yeah and Devil May Cry.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Games like that really defined that era of like like
a stylish, adrenaline fueled action games. And in the time since,
you know, the Souls like has really emerged as like
the preferred three D action title. But it's really cool
to see Ninja Guiden four kind of bringing the franchise
back into the forefront alongside what would turned out to
be an excellent two D side scroller in Ninja Gaiden
Rage Bound, which came out I think end of last month,
and so Ninja Gaiden four it actually unites two of
the most iconic action oriented studios really in the history
of video games. You know, Team Ninja's been the developer
of Ninja Gaiden since the Xbox release back in the
early two thousands. But they're bringing in Platinum Games, who
you know, near Automata, the Banetta series, astral Chain, all
these incredible action titles. They're bringing that wealth of experience
into the franchise. And I've seen some people kind of
express some concern that maybe this won't feel like a
tried and true Ninja Guiden game because Platinum Games is
co developing. It's not even like a support studio situation.
It's like they had There are two co directors on
Ninja Gaiden. One is from Team Ninja, one is from
Platinum Games. They're really working hand in hand. So yeah,
I traveled to Tokyo, visited Platinum Games, spent a full
day in the studio, which was really cool to be
in kind of like the building where all of these
incredible games were born out of.
Speaker 1: I have a question about their office. Is it is
it like a fancy office like a band diy or
is it more of like a just four walls and.
Speaker 2: Cubicles it's very sterile, which I found is often the
case with a lot of high profile Japanese studios.
Speaker 4: You know, I'm visited games laughing because it's like has it.
I don't, Mike, have you ever been to like Japanese studios.
I don't know if your career is every taking there,
but no, but.
Speaker 5: I have worked for a Japanese game company that had
somewhat similar design philosophy in America.
Speaker 2: He worked out of the Redmond office. So, like you've
seen the inside of Nintendo, I've been upstairs at Nintendo
and it it's very similar to that, where it's just
like all right, we have very like white walls and
like a TV up on the wall with a conference
phone in the middle of the table.
Speaker 4: I think from Software has like a like two dark
soul statues or something they.
Speaker 1: Have they have gone down to one gone like right
next like the.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So I've been to studios like game Freak and Atlas
and Sega over in Japan, Squaring Nicks. They're all kind
of similarly like uneventful in terms of like the decor,
Like you see some cool artifacts, like they have a
display case or several display cases at Platinum and you
walk in, you're like, oh, yeah, they worked on that game,
or that's a really cool like replica gun from Bayonetta.
But like outside of that, and like the fact that
there are like you know, twenty five gaming PCs in
a conference room for like people to play builds of
and everything, there's really not anything that would hint that
like this is where these incredible games came out of.
But you know, I got to play several hours of
Ninja Gaiden four. I talked to the co directors. I
talked to like the lead level design environmental guy, the
one of the art directors, and one of the composers.
So it was a pretty deep dive into not only
how this game came to exist, Like we dove deep
into like you know, how these studios united, how they
got signed under the Xbox Games publishing label, and also
like you know, just drilling down into the core mechanics
of this game, because like they have to walk that
like tight rope of Like, all right, there hasn't been
a new Ninja Guiden game in over a decade, so
the game design conventions have evolved so thoroughly that they
have to address that in some way. They can't just
put out Ninja Guiden four and have it play just
like two or three. It has to evolve in some fashion,
but if they evolve it too much, people are going
to be mad. They're like, oh, well, I waited so
long for this game, and it's unrecognizable as like a
successor to the games that I loved. And so they
had this difficult task of doing that, and I really
think that they nailed it, Like it feels definitively like
a Ninja Guiden game, while also implementing various things that
Platinum Games absolutely brought to the table, like small things
like you know, Platinum Games, when you hit an enemy
with your weapon, there's usually a hit stop, like there's
a brief pause when like there's a moment of impact
and then you follow through. Right. That adds just a
little bit like a visceral feeling. That's not something that's
been present in most Ninja Guiden games. But they did
implement that for something like when you delimb an enemy,
because what that tells you is now you can perform
these abilities that are like basically finishing moves called obliteration techniques.
So that was the thing that Platinum Games brought to
the table. They also designed the new protagonist Yakamo, who
is like the super agile. He almost seems like he
would fit like in with a Platinum Games title, Like
he's very like stylish, action driven. He's kind of like,
you know, edge Lord look to him, so he would
fit right in. And like just uses the word.
Speaker 4: D limb with the reckless such like a video game
thing that we just like walked right by. It's like, yeah,
we literation technique is also.
Speaker 5: Because amputate sounds so broke, like when you amputate an
arm off a character, You're like, wait, wait, wait, why
are you doing.
Speaker 2: That's so surgical, You're not really like like you know,
doing like a procedure.
Speaker 1: Stylish.
Speaker 6: Brian, your cover story used the word uh dismemberment a lot,
which I feel like also fit d limb is like
it fits in the vent diagram of like it is
what I feel like they'd use in the plane office building.
They're like, oh they do limit systems.
Speaker 7: Yeah, but yeah, Like so it feels really good in
the combat is I would say, much better than what
I remember Ninja guid and three, being like it's funny
because I posted it on the Ninja Gaiden subredditor I
was hanging out in there.
Speaker 2: Somebody else actually posted it and I was just answering questions,
and somebody was like, how was the AI compared to
previous entries, And I'm like, dude, it has been thirteen
years since.
Speaker 4: I played ninjakaid in three.
Speaker 2: But they were, you know, they are quite aggressive, like
the bosses in particular, and I checked out multiple modes.
I fought three different bosses, and you know, all the
bosses are instructive in their own ways. Like one taught
you to, like, you know, use your your grappling hook
to get out of danger and like remain super aggressive.
The other one taught you to like how to deal
with crowd control while there's also like a big bad
in the middle of it, like you know, trying to
take you out, but like there's also summonning minions and everything.
And then another one was like just saying mobile as
much as you can in a boss box. If you
plant your feet for too long, they'll either throw a
projectile at you or one case, she even grabbed me
and like just basically like almost one hit KOed me.
So there's a lot of like, oh, this boss teaches
you this, and this boss is skilled checking you on this,
and I think that's what a lot of Ninja guid
and fans are gonna want, because, like, you know that
these games are built around being a challenging and like
skill testing experience, and I always felt like it was
teaching me something new and then testing me on that
very shortly after that. And Ryu and Yakimo are both
playable in the game, even though Yakimo is the protagonist
of this one. So I got to play the story
chapters with Yakimo and then got dumped into challenge mode
where I could go back and actually play Yakimo's levels
as Reu Hayabusa, the longtime series protagonist. And they do
control similarly, like they both feel like you know, if
you if you just picked up your controller and played
either of them, you'd be like, oh, yeah, they control
the same, But when you bounce back and forth between
the two, it's like Yakimo is so much more adile.
He has a wider array of weapons, whereas Rio is
just like a physical force. Like he he's a little
bit slower, but he also has like just just his sword, right,
he doesn't really have like a wider range of weapons
in scam.
Speaker 1: Do you have a preference on how either of them felt.
Speaker 2: So I grew up playing games starring Reo and I
will always like him, But like, I think Yakimo is
a little bit more in the style that I like
to play, like fast paced action games. I like a
little bit more speed and like the ability to swap
between weapons. Yeah, so Yakimo eventually will have four weapons,
and then he also has this form that he can
take on called Blood Raven form. He comes from the
Raven clan, so he he's the Blood. He can transform
into Blood Raven form, and that also transforms his weapons.
So like he has like the dual blades as one
of his weapons, which are like really like you know,
evasive and fast paced, but when you take on the
Blood Raven form, it actually turns into like this really
like just ridiculously low blade that you can just like
attack enemies from halfway across the arena. And then there's
another one that transforms it from like a rap year
sword into like a drill and you just like could
perform like finishing moves on like the enemy with like
just drilling a hole through their chest. Basically.
Speaker 1: Meanwhile, Reeve's just got a sword.
Speaker 2: He's got a sword, but I know, it's like it's
the legendary sword that he's had in all of the entries.
Speaker 1: Though it seems like they're really pushing you to play
with his Yakamo character. It's like, oh, it's also got guns,
you know.
Speaker 4: Well he does.
Speaker 2: I mean, so Yakam also has this staff that turns
into a hammer that you can just like smash enemies
heads in with, and then he has this other the
fourth weapon that we just learned about are the assassin's tools,
and it's just this wide range of things like you know,
a giant shroken and like uh like the claws that
ninjas have sometimes and just this just wide range of weapons.
And then the raven, the blood Raven form of that
is he just sprouts two robot arms that give him
more range and power with those same weapons.
Speaker 5: So it's just like just for.
Speaker 2: An indicator of how like absurd this is. Like it's
not like they are like, oh, this is like we
are taking this so seriously. This is only for like, yes,
the challenge is serious and the gameplay is serious, but
they're leaning into just like the bombastic storytelling and like
over the top absurdity. So like you will not go
into this thinking like all right, well this is we
got to sit down and straight face to take this
this game seriously with every every story beat that it delivers,
like it's a fun story. I'm enjoying it. Like there,
you know, like the basically like off screen ryu habusas
like sealed this creature called the Dark Dragon, which is
a recurring enemy in the Ninja Guiden series, sealed him
away and thought he defeated him, but it turns out
he's just raining down like this like toxic rain on
top of Tokyo, turning it into like a ghost town.
And Yakimo goes to like assassinate the Dark Dragon priestess,
and she convinced him that actually we have to break
the seal and that's the only way we'll be able
to truly defeat him. So it is a very like, uh,
just absurd story, so you'll be able to experience that,
but like the combat itself, that that's where they really
take it seriously.
Speaker 1: Mike, are you are you a Ninja Guiden guy?
Speaker 5: I was an old school Ninja Guiden guy. I think
I liked what's weird is I like the Ninja Guiden
that was on the ds because you got to like
use your pet, use the stylist to like make the
moves and stuff. The I think when I played the
new ones, I just didn't have the patience for giving
the difficulty a shot. I'm a little more patient now,
so I should go back to them. But I think
like when those came out, I was like, this is
too hard. I don't want to learn this, and then
just never went back.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there is there is the Master Ninja Collection, which
is on including Switch like all major platforms, and I
just bought that after playing Ninja Gaiden four because I
was like, oh, I should replay some of those like sequences,
because I remember really liking one and two in particular,
and I heard that like they made a lot of
updates to three and it's still not great, like it's
still the weakest of the trilogy, but like they improved
it from the state that I reviewed, like the vanilla version.
But yeah, I mean I think that was even recently
on sale for like fifty percent off and you get
all three of those games, like the revitalized versions, and
it's on it's on game Pass too.
Speaker 4: I bet I bet if we pulled, Like, I bet
if we pulled like fifty thousand gamers about Ninja guid
and I bet we wouldn't get a single person calling
out the DS game Dragon Sword.
Speaker 6: I was gonna ask, what's the full title?
Speaker 4: It was it's not you held it like a book,
I remember, right, and dragon Sword was like the DS acronym.
I was like, all right, I'm into all that. But
it's like it's so it's.
Speaker 5: It's a goofy game. It's a goofy game. But that's
why I love DS games. They're so weird.
Speaker 1: Also, Stylus is mightier than the sword. That's all I got. Yeah,
that would be my lead, Ryan, What were we gonna say?
Speaker 2: I'll just say Also, the Dragon Sword is is where
I think we last saw the Dark Dragon, which is
like one of the main like catalysts for Ninja Guidenf's
story in game.
Speaker 3: Anyway.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, well cool. I mean it sounds really interesting.
I mean, the the Yakomo, apart from sounding like he
just got all of the budget put into him and
for Rio is just you know, giling the dragons. Is
there any other big highlights that that kind of came
from from your your time in Tokyo? Or is that
the predominantly, Like big focus of this story is that
is that combat.
Speaker 2: The story itself, I mean the combat the contrast that
exists between Ryu and Yakimo. Yakimo being kind of like
the young upstart Ninja, he has like a full like
he's got like the support of his clan behind him. Yeah,
and like you know, so you'll be playing through and
like hearing them chatter back and forth about stuff and
like discussing like what's going on and what the current
mission is and like the state of the world. Whereas
with Ryu you don't get any of that because he's
always been kind of like a lone wolf. But Ryu
does have he doesn't have the raven form, the blood
raven form, but he does have Gleam state, which is
like achieved in the same way. And what that does
it gives him like more aggressive combos and it also
lets him use like the elemental like Ninpo abilities like
the fire Ninto and I think there's one that like
kind of creates like a singularity that sucks enemies in
so Okay, he does have some tricks up his sleeve
and he does have a lot more power behind his attack.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think it's interesting that both well, the last
I guess what Rage Bound and then Ninja Guidon four,
Reu's kind of taking a back seat in both. Yeah,
do you think do you think they're kind of setting
him up to be Sunset or is this just a
way to kind of reintroduce people to the series through
through kind of new new protagonist eyes.
Speaker 2: I asked them about that, and they said that this
they wanted it to be kind of more approachable. So
by introducing it and having introducing Yachamoon, having the story
told primarily through his eyes, they were able to achieve that.
So it wasn't like you had to pick up, you know,
Ninja Guidens one through three in or to understand the story.
All you would understand was like, all right, Yakimo has
been convinced that he has to free the Dark Dragon
to defeat it, and Reu, the guy who sealed the
Dark Dragon away, wants to stop him, and that's kind
of like the core conflict. And so that was kind
of the main reason why they wanted to introduce a
new character, was so like it was a very basic storytelling.
It wasn't a continuation. But if you played the original
or the original trilogy of the Ninja guid in three
D games, you would understand like some references and some
callbacks and some recurring enemies.
Speaker 1: Well cool, Well, I know that you need to go
here a second, but you mentioned Shanobi Art of Vengeance earlier.
I just want to hear your quick thoughts on that
now that you've you've reviewed it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So this is a game from lizard Cube, which
is the studio that did Streets of Age four and
they also did oh nice, okay, the WonderBoy Revival, So
they've actually made a name for themselves kind of revitalizing
these old Sega ip that had just been you know,
kind of own in the storage closet for a while,
and Sega has always licensed it to them, but this
time they actually worked like hand in hand with lizard Cube.
So it's co developed by Sega and published by Sega,
whereas Streets of Rage four was just licensed by Sega
and then developed fully by lizard Cube and then published
I think by dot Emu. So it this is the
first time that lizard Cube has worked directly with Sega,
and I will say that the partnership has paid off
completely because you know, it feels similar to what I
was talking about with Ninjagaidon and four. They really walked
the tightrope of like this is not completely unrecognizable as
a new entry in this very very long, dormant franchise.
I think the last one came out on three DS,
so it's been quite a while. And they also made
it so it is fully in line in step with
like what you would expect from a twenty twenty five
action platformer. And you know, it's arguably one of the
most beautiful games I've played, probably in adulthood. Like it
is just absolutely stunning. There was there's one sequence, there's
some bonus stages in between like the long like main
mainline levels, and you're just you're riding on a wolf
and in the background there's all this stuff and it's
very like painterly art style, and I was just like
stunned at how gorgeous it was. And like eventually, you know,
you do adjust to it. I'm not just like whoa
every single time like something's happening on the screen, but
like the first couple of levels, I was like, holy crap,
Like this is just a beautiful freaking game. And it
does carry through all the way to the end. It's
challenging without being like controller throwingly difficult, although there were
some parts that I got stuck on for quite a while.
But the checkpointing is such that like you don't feel like,
oh my god, I have to play through like the
last twenty minutes of whatever. Yeah, it's it's you know,
forgiving in that way. But at the same time, like
you need to nail these jumps, you need to nail
these combat encounters. You can seek out more difficult combat encounters.
Like there are these like rifts that you can enter
that are gonna be either like a really tough platforming
challenge or a really tough combat challenge, and.
Speaker 1: That's like a little side room and keep going after that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, and it's optional. And then there's also like
elite squadrons that you can challenge in order to really
challenge yourself. And like there's like I think four of
those per levels or three or four of those per levels,
so like you have like an ample opportunity for exploration.
There's relics that you can find that allow you to
open up more options in the stores. There's lots of
rewarding explanation or explanation exploration, and that that gives you
plenty of reasons to poke around these largely linear but
like still Metroidvania inspired stages.
Speaker 5: So like the stages.
Speaker 2: Are laid out that like you know, as you explore,
the map kind of like builds out and there are
times where you need to go back and like, all right, well,
now I have this ability, I can crash through this
wall now or whatever. But they are largely linear, and
like there's a point A, and there's a point B
that you're trying to get to. There's a boss waiting
for you at the end of every stage. But the
exploration borrows so heavily from Metroidvania. For like, all right, well,
if I want to expand my shop availability, I need
to find these Oboro relics, and then that's gonna lead
me to like take this path that's very clearly a
side path, or like you know it's gonna it's gonna
ask me to go back to level one now that
I have like this new ability to punch through the
ground and like reach through like to this other area.
So like, there are so many reasons to explore, and
like it's all very rewarding and the combat is super
satisfying by the end of it. You have so many
different combos and like customizable like load outs that you
can build like through like either like the Ninpo abilities,
the Ninjutsu like Ultimate abilities, that it starts feeling almost
like all right, well, first of all, you can customize
it however you want, and then two like it starts
feeling almost like a fighting game where it's like, all right, well,
now it's like, you know, square square triangle, triangle is
like your your most basic comba. And then it's like,
what if I throw like you know, some sharkens into
that or some like some like Ninpo in the middle
of that, like light the guy on fire in the
middle of doing like a light and heavy attack, and
you know, there's all these different combinations that you can
pull off and you you unlock them through the store
as you go, and it like the boss battles are fantastic.
The levels, I would say are probably the levels in
the art style really compete between like how like what
is the what is the most perfectly designed part of
this game? But also you know, the platforming feels great
and the combat is fantastic as well. So right now
it is the front runner for my personal game of
the year.
Speaker 4: Wow.
Speaker 1: Damn.
Speaker 6: Yeah, that's crazy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that sounds cool.
Speaker 4: Highly recommend it on the d Lemming scale.
Speaker 3: Where does it land though?
Speaker 2: I mean, you are you do unload a lot of
heavy damage into people, and then you can perform an
execution style attack that finishes them off and makes them
explode like pinatas with like you know, drops and stuff.
Speaker 1: So sounds like a real obliteration to it is.
Speaker 2: Yes, So Year of the Ninja and between the you know,
I wrote a Shanoby Art a Vengeance feature a couple
issues for our first issue back, I wrote the Ninja
guid and four cover story, and then I reviewed Shanoby
Art a Vengeance. I'm just kind of tapped out writing
about Ninja's right now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's fair, that's fair. Well, Brian, thanks for joining
us today. I'll let you get back to your your
very busy Tuesday, but appreciate you coming on and talking
about Ninja, Guiden four and Shinoby.
Speaker 2: All right, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: All right, bye, Brian, all right, we are back and
we're gonna toss it over to Mike Drucker here to
chat about UFO fifty and anything else that you honestly
want to talk about. Mike, this game came out I
think during our Dark time? Is that right, Kyle?
Speaker 3: The Dark Period?
Speaker 1: I like a dark period version.
Speaker 4: We all were hibernating or something. I don't remember it.
Speaker 1: Was, Yeah, yeah, it was. It was during the Dark Period.
Speaker 3: I believe.
Speaker 4: Are you playing the Switch version? Is that what you're
Is that what you're doing or yeah?
Speaker 5: I mean I have the PC version and I bought
it again on the Switch, both because I there's a
certain type of game where I'm like, I want to
support it enough where I want more of this type
of game, so I'm willing to buy it more than once. Yeah,
you know, And also I just wanted it more places.
Speaker 1: That's totally this v game you could just jam on
for a long time.
Speaker 5: That's what I love about it. I mean, like I think,
what I think what people don't realize is it's not
like Warrio where where there's a ton of minigames in here,
or you know, micro minigames. These are full game, some
of which take hours to complete, some take like fifteen
minutes if you know what you're doing. But if you're
not familiar with it, it's basically a collection of fake
nes era games on a fake console. As if you're
going through the chronology of these games from like nineteen
eighty three to I think like nineteen eighty seven or eight,
almost like you're going through the whole lifetime life cycle
of the NES or the fancom except again, it's a
fictional system. There's also sort of like a meta thing
under the games, like the better you do in the games,
you start to unlock little things that give you information
about like this fake console. That's cool, but it's it's
but like every genre is represented. There's a there's like
a horror adventure game that's actually great. There are platformers,
there's like a bubble bobble soccer type game. There's uh,
there's a game called party House, which is just an
amazing streated.
Speaker 1: That's a game the only game I played from this
compilation so far, and I love party House. That game rules.
Speaker 5: Party House is almost worth admission, like the price of
admission alone. It's so good. Basically, party houses kind of
it's not a deck builder, but think like a deck
builder where you're trying to h around. You're inviting people
over for a party, and those people either bring in
money or they bring in popularity. Those are the two
resources and with popularity, you can buy more people, and
with money you can expand the size of the house
to have the party in. And then there's like little
things like there's some people who are worth a lot
of points, but they're jerks, so if too many show
up at once, the cops come to the party, it's
it's it's it's like an astonishingly fun and fast strategy
and I love it so much.
Speaker 6: Buys people, but popularity increases the size of the house.
Speaker 5: I might have got that reverse reverse Okay.
Speaker 6: I heard it, and I was like, that's crazy game design,
that's exactly awesome. I was about to I was ready
to write an essay about No I hadn't.
Speaker 1: Swapped like from the game. Oh go ahead, Kyle, What
were you saying?
Speaker 4: Is it a switch to proper game or is it
a switch one game?
Speaker 5: Switch one? Switch one? But like it's also simple that
you know, I'm someone who still uses my switch one,
Like my switch one has become sort of like I
live in New York City, so it's not like my
throat in my bag and take it on the subway
type console because I no longer care if I break
it or lose it, because I have another one, which
is a terrible way to view your things, but it
runs just as well as on one is too, and honestly,
you could say it runs a little better because it
upscales to the higher resolution on the switch to and
a few of the games you have a slight like
dithering type effect a little bit with some of the
pixel art. It's not a big problem, but like if
you on like the fan forms, there's one or two
people who aren't happy about it, but it works great
on either console.
Speaker 1: The rules, any other any other highlights from besides Party House.
Speaker 5: God Like, like I said, I forget what the Horror
one is named, but like, once you get into it,
that's really good. There's the problem is they all have
like sort of generic any style names, and so like
I'll be like the one where the lady is jumping
on clouds and going up a lot, and I put
probably one hundred hours into this, and I'll be like,
I think that's velgris because I'm so used to just
clicking on the icon of the game and being like,
all right, we're gonna play more of a Samurai Dodgeball,
which is not the name, which is not the name
of it at all, which is, but another one of
the game is basically kind of like a sports game
where you're to samurai who are hitting a disc or
a ball back and forth. It's so good and it's
so much value for your dollar, which I know is
a weird thing to say about video games when I'm
constantly begging them to be shorter. But there's so much
to do in it, and like you said, like because
there's fifty essentially full sized games in it each I
mean not each, but a lot of them in very
different genres. Like there's a game called There's There's a
pin Golf where you're it's basically pinball and golf put
together rules. There's so much to do there that it's
It's one of those games also that like you can
play for fifteen minutes with the sound off if you're
on the couch, Like, you don't need to put a
lot of time into it. You don't need to be like, Okay,
if there's a cut scene, I'm not going to be
able to play this because I only have forty five minutes.
It's the perfect portable game that with experiences that take
a couple hours or a couple of minutes. I know
that I'm sounding like I made the game and I'll
make money. I'm just such a big fan of this kind.
Speaker 6: Yeah the job. Can I ask when you played the games,
did you what order? Did you play them in? Did
you go chronological order? Did you just see what like
looked good?
Speaker 5: I went, I saw what looked good. I thought about
going in chronological order, but then I was like, I
want to try the wall with the dinosaurs, and I
went with again, there's a strategy game where you play
birds who worshiped dinosaurs to get special powers for war.
Of course, of course, as you do as you do
so I initially my initial attention was like, I'm going
to play them in order the way that God intended,
And then I immediately jumped around when things look fun.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, and I love that. Like obviously, Derek, you
kind of headed up the project, but he he pulled
a lot of friends. I know Eric, I can't remember
his last name. One of one of his buddies who
has helped design I think he helped with like Spelunky
and all that. It feels like such a fun you know,
you kind of see their individual fingerprints on the various
games as as you go through. I got it. I
probably played like ten, ten or eleven of those games
and was always one that I wanted to bookmark to
come back to because it'd come out in a complicated
period of my life, as we covered, and yeah, that
reminds me pen Golf was. I was kind of looking
up screenshots and I forgot that was the one that
that I kind of had my eye on, but I
never got to. So I might have to do we
know how much it is on Switch? I can I
guess I can look real quick. I won't say thirty bucks,
but okay, yeah, oh yeah, twenty four ninety nine, Okay.
Speaker 4: Okay, I have it on Steam Deck. I got it
during the Dark period, but man, I was just like
intimidated by it, Like it's it was almost like too much,
you know, and I do I need to I want.
I just prefer playing games on Switch or switch to
just because it's like lighter than the Steam Deck. And
so maybe that's the excuse I need to like give
it another It's not that I didn't like it or anything.
It was just like I played the first two games
and I was like, oh my god, I have forty
eight more of these to potentially try and enjoy or
maybe not even like and that's fine because I'll just
go to the next one. But I don't know just
that is it's a full time job.
Speaker 6: It's I mean, I like, I don't know if it
has to do with our job. It probably has something
to do their job. But there is a thing when
I'm playing a game when sometimes I'm like, oh my god,
I have like thirty more hours left of game before
I get to the end of it, versus being like,
I gotta upgrade my armor, I gotta talk to that
weird guy in the alley. I gotta see if I
can put these two pets together and make a third pet.
Like all that kind of stuff is what like actually
pulls me through the game. But it's like how long
it is, Yeah, you can actually click with.
Speaker 1: Oh the number one thing. Number one like self sabotage.
Thing I do is I'll be playing a game and
I'll google how many chapters are in X game. See
it's like thirty six, and I'm like, I'm on four.
Speaker 6: Knowing the chapters helps me a lot, Like chapters are
really I way prefer chapters to an hour count because
like I think I just play games slower than most
people or I just get distracted very easily. But knowing
I'm like four out of thirty six, I'm like, ooh,
I can knock another chapter off today, and I feel
like I'm making progress versus like I don't know fifty game.
That's another example of like, you know, I could I
know exactly how much I've done well, yeah, And but.
Speaker 5: I'm sort of like that with mini games, where like,
for for example, like Final Fantasy Rebirth, there was a
point where I was like, how many of these goddamn
are there? And that actually helped me stop doing the minigames.
I was like, I'm not going to do all of this.
When I saw how much there was, I was almost
like relieve that I would not be doing that.
Speaker 1: Yeahah.
Speaker 6: There's also a knowledge of letting yourself be like I
actually I would rather finish this game not one hundred
percent than drop it in the middle. Yes, where it's
like I want to enjoy five UFO fifty games rather
than never picking it up because it's too intimidating. But
you have to I don't know, I personally have to
talk myself into that. I'm like, it's okay, I don't
need to get full synchronization or whatever every single level.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, great pull for UFO fifty. Have
you been playing anything else, Mike, or is that most
of what you've been kind of jamming?
Speaker 5: I've been. I've been for some reason, even though I
know the remake just came out. In defiance of that.
I'm playing Metal Gear Solid three again, the HD Collection
version and the three DS version. Oh, you did start
playing the three D playing them at the same time,
same time, because the three DS version is so weird
and it's not great, no controls, weird controls.
Speaker 4: Well, Mike and I left for we met, like when
I was in New York doing the Meddle Gear event,
like the review event, and you were talking, You're talking
up the three D S version. I had remembered that.
I think I think I actually got my copy from
Game Informer, Like we got an extra copy back when
we got like physical copies of games, and I gave
it to my brother and I went to his apartment
and got it and I started playing it, and I
texted Mike. I was like, Mike, this is this is
almost unplayable, Like this is like you you have to
use the face buttons to aim in first person.
Speaker 5: It's so it's okay, Yeah, I love, I love. I
love a bad video game.
Speaker 1: I love.
Speaker 5: I mean, I love like a bad version of a
great video the Game Boy version of Mortal Kombat. I
will the worst. I want the worst version of the worst.
Speaker 4: I will say it was picking the three DS back
up and charging it up and turning it on. It
was a moment of like, you know what, maybe we
didn't talk about how cool this stereoscopic technology is, Like, yeah,
it gives me a headache and I can't keep it
on for too long, but like it does work, and
that's pretty cool. You know, Because I just at a
cert after the first like month of having my three DS,
I like I would just turn it on to see like,
oh cool it's in three D.
Speaker 3: Okay, let me turn it off and play the game.
Speaker 4: Like that's almost how I played every three DS game.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I have this miserable Oh sorry, Charles, go ahead.
Speaker 6: I was gonna say. I got to the point at
the end of the three DS lifespan where I would
start being like, oh, yeah, this thing's in three D
and I'd check it and the game they didn't even
bother to at the three D like a sixteen three
DS game. It's like they were like, it's actually not
worth the trouble.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I got my three DS I think twenty sixteen.
It was really late to it, and I was kind
of I knew this. I think the NX the switch
had been announced at that point, and I wanted just
something in that realm. I was feeling, you know, nostalgic
about Nintendo and all that, and I had this horrible
desk job, and I would just go to the bathroom
and sit in the men's shower room and just play
three DS. There's animal crossing, but I remember the stereoscopic
stuff was just like kind of enchanting, even in twenty sixteen. Ye.
But I would get nauseous really quickly, and so then
I would have to go and work the rest of
the afternoon, just feeling awful. But uh, yeah, I should
I should play something on three DS soon.
Speaker 3: You know, are you?
Speaker 4: Are you playing metal Gear on new three DS or
like a classic three D? So can you use the
control stick on the new three DS? Do you have
to like change a setting.
Speaker 6: Or so much better?
Speaker 4: God, I don't because I couldn't. I didn't. I didn't
dive super deep into or anything. I just played for
a couple of minutes, but I was like, I, I,
you know, I don't know to use to like I
I fondled the nub yeah yeah, and it wasn't moving
the camera. That was the wrong word. Okay, So I
didn't know if maybe I needed to like change the
setting or something, because I think it came out before
New three DS. But you, I said you were wrong
at the time, but you were right. You can use
the circle pad, so it must there must be some
way to turn it on. I just don't know how
to do it. Maybe I'll give it another shot so
I don't have to aim with the face buttons, because
I was just flabbergasted that that's how it worked.
Speaker 6: Mike A, someone who's who's never played Metal Gear Solid
three has just started playing Delta. Can you pitch me
the reason that I should drop my PS five version
of Delta and pick up the three DS version instead?
Speaker 1: Uh?
Speaker 4: Do you hate yourself?
Speaker 5: Because if you do, and which I hate myself, it's perkay,
Like if you if you want, if you want yourself
to have a slightly worse time, if you want to hear.
Speaker 6: Any any other selling points.
Speaker 4: Oh the other The other thing. The other reason I
was almost mad about having been tricked into playing it
is I was laying on my back playing it and
the opening it's like you climb up the tree and
get your pack, and it's like it adds a balancing
mini game right where you have to like balance snake.
But the thing was I was holding I was like
holding it on my back and it doesn't work, and
it was like the middle of the night, and I'm like,
a snake just keeps falling off the tree and I'm like,
and I was calling the colonel or whatever, a commander zero.
Speaker 3: I forget what his name was.
Speaker 4: Which is funny that he was talking about the three
ds and the tilt controls because they re recorded new
dialogue for him to talk about it, which is very funny.
But I had to like sit up at like I
don't know, one o'clock in the morning and like properly
sit so I could balance snake on that.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: So yeah, does that does that help you, Charles? Does
that encourage you to go pick up?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 6: It really doesn't.
Speaker 5: I mean yeah, I mean I got I can't. I
can't convince you to drop the malder one for the
last one because I don't have a good I think
it's just you know, like a game.
Speaker 4: Ye, yeah, you know, while.
Speaker 5: I don't know, I don't know, I will I will play.
Like like a few months ago, like almost on a Dare,
I emulated and played the ZX Spectrum version of Street
Fighter Too, which is as I just I love. I
love a good bad video game. I love it so much.
Speaker 4: While we're on three DS, this might be a good transition,
But Mike, I want to at least talk a little bit.
I wanted to connect to you and Charles because Charles
is a big kid Icarus fan, and of course you
worked on us and you and you wrote it and
you talk about it in your book too.
Speaker 3: Working on Kid Chorus, which is fun. So yeah, I.
Speaker 5: The nicest compliment I got was that my Jason Schreyer said,
my book has more about the inside of Nintendo than
Reggie's book.
Speaker 4: Wow. Yeah, it really probably does. Yeah, he talks. It
is funny because Reggie's book has a lot of discussions
about like going out to dinner with me at Moto,
which is like outside of literally this is how I
outside the office.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, Charles, this is remind me your favorite game
is the is Lego Batman? Is that right, Lego Batman too?
This is this is there for you?
Speaker 6: Yeah, my first game I ever played was Lego Star Wars.
So I have a very I have a lot of nostalgia,
specifically like Charles is a baby.
Speaker 3: That's fair. I'm a baby.
Speaker 6: I was born in the year two thousand, which is
relevant for my Kiddichrius story of it was it was
like maybe the first game I remember finding out about
on my own, Like I think there was like a
we what even was it? They had like a Wei
news channel or something like that, but it wasn't like
the actual Wei news channel. It was like the way
you they like played trailers for games or whatever, and
that's how I learned about this game. And I was like,
this seems cool, and it was like the first time
I played a game, and like none of my friends
had told me about it. I don't think I knew
anyone else that knew what it was, but I was like,
this might be the best thing anyone's ever made. And
I'm twelve and I know that definitively. But then to
return to it later and be like, oh, I actually
I do genuine love this thing, and not in a
metal gear solid three D way. But yeah, I don't
I don't know what what you remember of it or
like what I think.
Speaker 5: I think.
Speaker 6: The thing I am curious about is uh localizing like
uh text and stuff. Uh that can come I imagine
at a lot of different places in the development cycle
of a game like that could be something that happened
really early, or it could be like pretty late, right
as you're like we're got to record stuff, we're gonna
write it all up. So I don't know when you
join the team or just what you remember about that.
Speaker 5: I mean, we The lucky thing about the Treehouse at
Nintendo is a lot of their localization product projects, you know,
so probably starting in like the you know, mid or
late two thousands, they started working at the beginning of
the cycle. So rather than it being like the old
stories of a Final Fantasy game where like a translator
got a giant stack of papers in three weeks to
translate something, we were playing early builds of the game
while you know, Soccari would give us notes or you know,
we'd get an email that was like, hey, we've changed
the story beat, which means that this dialogue in this
section of the document has changed, you guys need to
review it or you know, so like it. It's not
like we were development with them, because that's a little
bit grandiose to say, but we were part of the
whole development process, so as the story changed, we got
to change with it. And because Sakarai wanted it to
be a funnier game, he was much more open to us,
you know, not changing jokes without his permission, but making
sure that things idiomatically made sense, making sure that the
humor that he wanted in specific moments was evoked, rather
than we've got to stick to this translation as closely
as possible. Like, he encouraged us to like really make
it our own. And it was such a cool, fun
process I think. I think I personally feel lucky that
I got to see it as it was being made.
I think like, if I was just playing a really
fun game and localizing it, it wouldn't have been as magic.
It was honestly just so cool to be in the
middle of that process.
Speaker 6: Yeah, that's cool. So does does Sagarai? Does he speak English?
Does he understand the jokes when you send it to him,
or would it be like would he get you a
thing you would translate it and then someone would translate
it back for him to understand or for the Japanese
team in general to understand.
Speaker 5: That would be like most of it, because a lot
of it would be communicational with email, like he does
have a good grasp of English, but we I'm sure
there must have been at least one video call, but
I can't remember it. I remember a ton of emails,
including at one point he injured his hand from playing
the game so much so we got like emails from
someone else that was like, Hey, you're gonna get emails
from us for a little while because he injured his
hand playing this.
Speaker 4: So that we talked about it retroactive at least.
Speaker 6: Yeah, that's so funny given the complaints people have about
the game, uh, just the controls that literally. I also, I,
for the record, always liked the control scheme. And maybe
it's because I was twelve and had twelve year old
sized hands that bothered me in the same way, but yeah,
they should have just had a second I mean, they
did eventually add the second control stick.
Speaker 5: On there, but yeah, I mean I remember, you know,
even during development, this wasn't really part of our conversation.
But since you know, you're also as a localizer, you're
also writing the you know, you're localizing the man in
the box art. That there was that conversation of whether
or not to include a stand, whether or not to
include some extra thing to make it work, Like I
remember there being internally a lot of conversations about making
this game more playing, yeah, because it is a difficult
game to play on a regular three DS A little Did.
Speaker 6: You all you said you were translating of the manual
and the menus and stuff. Did you all do all
of that? Were you like assigned different parts? How did
the work breakdown?
Speaker 5: Well, I it was me, and then there was I
was sort of like I wouldn't say, I would say
like junior. I would say I was the junior writer,
and there was a senior writer named Anne Lynn, so
she was sort of the overall person. And a lot
of the things that I was assigned to were, you know,
punching up certain scenes where they wanted more jokes, or
things like writing the idol text. You know, writing the
idols were basically trophies in the game, So getting to
write the text for that was super fun because they
basically let you do whatever you want, so that was
super fun. I mean, like to a certain extent. I
couldn't like, you know, you know, dropping a slur or something,
but it was like an amazing thing opportunity to write
all those idle texts. So Ann would sort of like
assign me to do different things, and she was sort
of in charge of the overall project, but she was
also the one that was like helping to direct the
voice recording and whatnot, so it was very collaborative. It
was it wasn't like go off to a corner and
do this. It was more like, hey, this new issue
or this new change or you know, this new thing
has popped up. Can you go handle that?
Speaker 6: Cool ell?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, very cool. Thank you for uh oh.
Speaker 4: I just wanted to make a request Mike to you personally.
Could you get that game over to switch to?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 5: Oh man, I would I would love that. I would
love that, despite the fact I would not be paid
for it. And there's like a ninety chance my name
is not the credits for that one.
Speaker 6: Make make them make Kidd's Uprising. It can either be
a sequel or it can be a port or whatever.
Get it on switch to and the day it comes out,
I will not play it, and instead I will go
back and play the three DS version all the way
through the completion and be like.
Speaker 1: You, guys, you gotta play the three DS version. It's
so much better. I love it. Also, you're in New
York apparently, Yeah, I'm in New York. That's what.
Speaker 4: Talks language.
Speaker 1: Yeah, my mother was born there. Really is that true?
Is that Charles Law?
Speaker 3: Yeah? I mean I I don't know that.
Speaker 1: I just know Cincinnati, Cincinnati.
Speaker 6: My my mom born and raised in New York, lived
on Long Island. My parents met at school in Ithaca,
but my dad was always like from Ohio, and then
he convinced, convinced, he got my mom to move back
to the Midwest with him. And my mom's immigrant parents
were like, who's this white boy that's stealing our stealing
our daughter away from us here to go live in Kentucky.
That's weird. And it all worked out obviously good.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well cool. I also recommend if people haven't go
on the YouTube channel YouTube dot com slash Game Informer,
we put up a rapid fire interview with the folks
from the Chinese room on Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines too,
and Cincinnati does make a does get a mission and
a really funny joke. Actually, so go check that out.
But kind of moving on, got a couple more topics
can attack before we get out of here, Kyle, I
want to toss it to you. Number one, The Rogue
Prince of Persia came out last week surprise drop.
Speaker 3: In one point.
Speaker 1: That makes one point one point. It came out earlier
this year, I think what April may Ish, I.
Speaker 6: Think it was.
Speaker 4: I played it, yeah, I did when they announced it.
When they announced it, I did like a preview for it.
Speaker 3: I remember.
Speaker 4: For the shutdown, yes, yeah, and then and then the
sort of surprise detail was like, oh yeah, and it's
going to go into early access within like two or
three weeks. So it's it's it's been. It's been in
early access for a while.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I don't know why I thought it was earlier this year.
Huh okay. But regardless, even playing the one point, oh
kind of came out of nowhere, surprise drop. How is it?
I know, like the big the big difference between that
and The Lost Crown that came out last year also,
which is that you can kind of wall run along
kind of like the the two D Escape.
Speaker 4: I mean, I mean there's a lot of differences. I mean,
the only similarity is they're too they're both two D
Prince of Persia games kind of ultimately, because I mean,
Lost Crown is a great Metroid inspired game that I
really love, and this is this is this is a
rogue game specifically. You know, it's from the folks that
make Dead Cells, so it feels a lot like Dead
Cells in a very complimentary way. And then and then
there's a bunch of like Prince of Persia mechanics where
it's like, yeah, like the it's kind of hard to
explain without like seeing it, but like sure you can
see the wall behind you, Like there's not always a
wall in this sort of the background, but when it's there,
you can run along it. And that feels very like
Sands of Time. I I love Prince of Persia, like
that trilogy, like Sands of Time and Warrior Within and
Two Thrones, like I adore those games. Those were like
some of my favorite of that generation. And then the
two thousand and eight game, I think is this like
kind of underrated, beautiful game just for a million different reasons.
So I've always like I've always been a big fan.
And then rogues. I kind of like, I kind of
like I'm like a fair weather fan, you know, like
there are some that I really love. I love Undermine
to the point where like when we were in the
Dark Period, I went and like worked with Thorium on
on Undermine and stuff like that because I adored that
game so much. But then even the original Dead Seals
I've never beaten, Like it's just like it never really
clicked with me. But this one I really I really
like because it's like the I just like the I
like the the IP, which sounds really lame to call it,
like you're a big jake Jill Princes, but it like it.
It feels good for the combat. The wall running is unique,
like it's not it does. It feels like Prince of Persia,
but it doesn't really feel like a lot of two
D action games. And then I also like this sort
of story which fits well into a rogue structure because
like the whole idea is like the Prince, the titular
prince that you're playing as, has always been able to
like rewind time. It was like a secret that he
kept to himself. But then something happens where like the
Huns come and invade his home and so he's having
to like relive this day over and over where he's
trying to get the Huns out of his home and
like save his family and stuff like that. And I
just always love like Hades does it well too, where
it's like I love a contextualization of the mechanics, you know,
and it's yeah, and it's it's cool that like the
Prince has a memory of everything that's happening, like he
is reliving this day over and over, and then he's
like finding people and bringing them to this one area
where they can like stay and they are also kind
of aware of what's going on. So I just like
I like the lore of it, like in a weird way.
It feels good to play, and I like the lare
of it, and it's it's one of those it's one
of those games I've been playing on steam Deck where
it was like one of those things where I was like, oh,
let me check this out. I like Prince of Persia.
I liked playing it last year and I did like
three or four runs and I was like, I think
I might be seeing this thing to the end, you know,
like I really I really want to keep going with it. Yeah,
it just feels good.
Speaker 1: I need a new Steam back game right now. My
couch game, well, I tried to make it World of Warcraft.
I'm trying to catch up on the last expansion before
they dropped the big, the big new one next year
with like the housing update and stuff. But then I
forgot they they now Word of Warcrap is like a
bunch of cinematics in it, and so it doesn't make
it a good couch game anymore, unlike like Vanilla Wow.
So then I've kind of been playing a lot of
Magic the Gathering Arena and loving that. But last night
I got like super punished. I've ranked up to I
think like silver, which it really isn't that hard. You
just have to play a bunch of matches, and I
just got walloped, and I was like, I need another
couch game because this is starting to stress me out.
So maybe maybe the Rogue Prins of First or maybe
that gets added to the rotation, because I mean, I
think the that's I also own UF fifty on Steamduck already,
so I should just play that instead of buying a
new game. No, but I think the Saturday Morning kind
of cartoon vibe of the art style really stood out
to me for Robe Prince of Persia, and I heard,
aren't there like something like, uh, isn't there like a
special attention given to the weapons in the game? Am
I remembering that from like the previews, like there's a
lot of various weapons you can grab?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean if you think of Dead Cells, right, Like, okay, okay,
so it's similar. It's works but basically identically. Like it
almost sounds like I'm like being rude to the game,
but it's like, man, I feel like Dead Cells.
Speaker 3: You should check out Prince of Pressure like they're very similar.
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, Yeah that sounds cool as hell. Kyle.
You've also been playing Luminess a rise, right, Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, there's a demo that came out today. And I
don't know how you all feel about Luminez Mike U
Luminez fan.
Speaker 5: Uh?
Speaker 2: You know what?
Speaker 5: It is a puzzle game that I think I enjoy
once every eight years where there will be like a
week where I'm like, I love this game. Why don't
I play this more often? And then I'll never play
it again for like eight more years and be like,
why why haven't I played this fun musical puzzle but
I love Tetris effects, so like I do trust them,
and this feels like that version of.
Speaker 4: Tetris effect was I was like a Day one PSP owner,
and if you're a Day one PSP on or you're
automatically a luminous fan because it is it was the
best game for the platform, and it was also the
one that you could most easily justify to your friends
who are like, wow, you spend a lot of money
on that thing, and be like no, no, no, but its
like it has new Tetris on it basically. But so
I love that game. And then when they released that
game on Switch like twenty eighteen or something like that,
I felt like way back in love with it, and
I was like I was like doing a lot of
like elliptical biking at the time, and I found that
that was a perfect game to like turn off my
brain and not think about the fact that I was
like moving my body more than I wanted to and
like time would just disappear, you know. And then it
was funny. I played the demo and like was a
pretty much immediately enamored, and I was like, this is wonderful.
The music, it's very Tetris effect. Inspired. But then I
had this moment where I was like, like the sort
of the shifting style of like that that Tetris effect
sort of does where it's like it changes like the
way your blocks look and the music and all that stuff.
I was like, I never connected the dots until that
till this moment that I was like, oh, that's what
Luminez has been doing from day one, Like this is
how Luminez always works. It always changes music every couple
of minutes, it always changes art style every couple of minutes.
And it was it was just kind of a moment
where I was like, oh, yeah, this is like perfect,
Like this is like like this isn't really it's it's
more that it's less that this is like Luminez's take
on Tetris effect and more that Tetris effect was, you know,
it's take on Luminez sort of retroactively where but yeah,
but it's but it's it's great. Like I was sad
when I beat the third level and I was like
I wanted to keep going.
Speaker 3: This is so just fun?
Speaker 1: Is this one?
Speaker 5: Also?
Speaker 3: VR?
Speaker 4: Does it have a VR mode PlayStation VR two?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 4: Yeah, which I.
Speaker 5: Oh, I'm one of eight people.
Speaker 4: I'm one of the eight as well, but only because
Sony sent me once a review.
Speaker 5: Sony sent me one that I paid five.
Speaker 4: But this is I mean to sort of insult PSVR
a little bit. This is the first time I've considered, like, oh,
maybe it's time to plug that headset back in and
play some luminez Arise, because yeah, Tetris Effect in VR
is like one of the one of the best VR
games frankly, you know, like period.
Speaker 5: It's so good. It's it's it's and I like that,
you know. I like the PSVR two. It's actually like
a pretty good piece of technology that just wasn't used
that much.
Speaker 4: It's comfortable, it feels good on your face. But like
I just will always go Quest three first because like
it's just so much simpler, you know, like it's it's
just like a pain to plug in the PSVR two,
even though it is it's a nice piece of hardware
for sure.
Speaker 5: Yeah, although PSVR two is also really good for like movies,
it's like a it's a little bit better, I feel
like it, you know, if you have Blu rays and
stuff like that, just watching them on a giant screen
and isolated blackness is really fun.
Speaker 3: Maybe I should try that.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I'm a terrible person. I feel like I've just
convinced you guys. I have the worst game again version
of Ports of Games, and I watch my movies.
Speaker 6: And VR and you look up multiple VR twos to
one PS five.
Speaker 3: Oh, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I don't think.
Speaker 6: I'm just I'm just trying to be like this is
I don't I don't mean this WI is sound mean?
Speaker 1: I was like, the answer is alone.
Speaker 6: This sounds like a really cool way to watch movies
with my partner.
Speaker 4: Oh, I have to Oh.
Speaker 5: I can't buy two.
Speaker 1: Oh that's not what I need.
Speaker 5: No, no, no, no. Remember when I said you got
to yourself. Listen, man, If you work on that every day,
you can have a gaming life.
Speaker 4: Like what's the last movie you watched in the PSVR? Sinners?
Oh that actually that actually sounds pretty freaking great and
r actually yea, yeah, damn it, that's great massive. I
was hoping you were going to say something real embarrassing,
but that's that actually is like damn it, ye Sinners
of the perfect to watch in there?
Speaker 3: Uh yeah.
Speaker 4: We were talking the other day speaking of PSP, about
watching Spider Man two on PSP and like being that's
kind of reminds me of that. It's like a really unique,
kind of terrible way to watch a great movie.
Speaker 1: No, I had Yeah.
Speaker 5: Yeah, they had Shrek on the Jeep on the Game
Boy Advance remember that.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah they also had Yeah they had you get
I had Pokemon. Yeah, Bob also a Lizzie McGuire episode
that you could watch on the game Boy Advance player
that I definitely owned because I was obsessed with with
Hillary Duff as a kid. But yeah, that sounds that
sounds awesome. I'm I recently got sent a Metaquest three
The Less Powerful or the Less It has less resolution,
But I really I feel like this is my chance
now to go back and replay a lot of enhances
VR titles. You know, I loved Humanity on like a
flat screen, but I want to play Humanity and VR.
I think they also have some like exclusive levels in
VR or something, and then Tetris Effect, and I think
I can just do the Steam link thing where I
plug the cable in and I could theoretically play Liminess Arise,
So that might be that might be on the docket.
Speaker 3: Fee Yeah, I was.
Speaker 5: Just gonna see Yeah, and the Quest three not for nothing.
The Quest three. Also, if you do the right pass through,
have a giant steam deck screen. Really you're just sitting
on the couch and want to have a giant steamed
I know you could just hook it into the TV. Yeah, yeah, yeah, no,
I've totally I've totally played it almost in that like
ar type setting. You have a big screen floating in
front of.
Speaker 6: Alex Is just looped back around to playing Wow on the couch.
Speaker 1: So cool, Yeah, exactly, exactly, Yeah, hell yeah, I can't wait.
I I played Limitess a Rise a little bit at
this past summer game Fest. I think I played like
four or five stages and was really blown away. I
mean the music is just I think, is it idellic?
They did the Tetras effects soundtrack. I think they're coming
back for this one as well. And I remember they
were playing it through like Jeff Keeley's Samsung Partnership TVs
that are like this, so there's like no headphones.
Speaker 6: That's the product saw Amazon.
Speaker 1: Exactly. Yeah, and so I remember like, can we can
we turn the TV up? Because it's in like one
of those private little appointment rooms and I'm just like
ear up to like the TV as much as possible
playing Lumines, but from what I heard, it's not great.
Speaker 6: But yeah, I played it for the first time when
I played this demo, which I didn't even finish because
it was like right before we were recording the podcast. Yeah,
I just wanted to say they explained the rules to me.
I kind of understand it. There's a chain mechanic that
I didn't really grasp and that's new.
Speaker 3: So I was a little confused by too.
Speaker 6: Yeah, okay, so I didn't it didn't really matter, and
I was like, I think I'm doing a bad job.
But Brian earlier was talking about the background art and
Shanobi and how he's like, whoa, that's cool, and he
was like, but I was like playing the game, like
I get blown away, but that i'd be playing the game.
I don't think i've recovered from from that. When I
was playing Luminous, right, I think I was just kind
of transfixed. And the fact that it makes like a
little piano note every time you move it back and forth.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, I felt like.
Speaker 6: An iPad baby.
Speaker 3: You know, it's like.
Speaker 1: You're gonna love it. Yeah, knowing you and your taste, Yeah,
you'll you're gonna really like that.
Speaker 3: I'm excited for it for sure. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, when's it come out?
Speaker 4: Not soon enough?
Speaker 1: Yeah, October.
Speaker 3: I'm on the website.
Speaker 1: I bet I could find it.
Speaker 4: I also, I was just googling around to see if
it is coming to Quest, which I don't know if
they've confirmed November eleventh.
Speaker 1: Okay, they have not confirmed Quest. They've confirmed PS five
and Steam. But I was thinking I could hook my
my Quest up to Steam with the cable. Maybe what
I was meaning by that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but yeah, demo's out now. To be clear, like
it's you know, this isn't like we had early preview access.
Actually I think we did have early access to it,
but I wasn't able to get around to it, so
I just played it the same time as everybody else.
Speaker 1: Well, speaking of early access, I've been playing a game
called Void Breaker on Steam. It is a first person
shooter rogue light, and you are the whole concept is yours,
this person trapped in a digital construct prison, and you
are fighting through combat scenarios to collect combat data for
an algorithm, and you're kind of like stuck in this
this hell, just replaying these these levels over and over,
and there's kind of like you get introduced very early
on to this you know this way out and you
kind of like that is kind of the the main
thrust for like your upgrades and stuff. But the core
concept is you have this weapon and think, like I
think I was describing for the podcast, it's very people
have played ghost Runner like very Parkore focused. There are
some other additional things you can do, like grinding on
on on rails and and you know, you've got your
mid air dash, your typical kind of like FPS modern
PS mechanics. But there is a really robust layer of
destructibility in the world and you are essentially being thrust
into these arenas where there's these corrupt robots that are
are kind of all coming at you. There's it feels,
honestly yeah. It Void Breaker kind of reminds me a
bit of of the stylings of of Returnal just in
like the very like big lasers, lots of haze on
the map, that sort of thing. But what makes it
really interesting is there is a stagger system tied to
various enemies, and similarly to like a doom game, where
like you have to perform these staggers and rather than
like an execution and doom and that's how you get
health and AMMO back, and so you're really incentivized to
you have a telekinesis to like pick up objects and
throw it at folks and that'll help stagger them. Or
you have a grenade that you can, like a basic
grenade you can throw and like if they are above
a st shore, if you're underneath like a bridge fighting,
you can throw a grenade up above and the debris
that falls down from the destruction will stagger the enemies
and it kind of gives you another layer. Yeah, it's
it's very cool. And then the I think the really
big hook for this game is the way in which
you upgrade your weapons. Essentially, it almost reminds me of
the hacking mini game in Marvel Spider Man, where it's
like this this like grid.
Speaker 4: That comes where you can press skip and not bother
with it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that part, that part, Yeah, yeah, I actually think that.
Speaker 4: To be clear, I actually quite enjoyed those and I
did all of them. Okay, so I just want to make.
Speaker 1: That Wow, Kyle, you're really mean, think about like that
Spider Marvel Spider Man like grid kind of look, but
instead you have these sockets that as you progress to
the run, and you can kind of similarly to other
rogue lights, like you can kind of pick which which
path you want to go through on your route. So, oh,
there's a shop coming up, I'm going to prioritize that,
I'll do that. But whether you do that or you
clear an arena and a chest drops at the end,
you are collecting these modules. And there are basic modules
like increase your grenade damage. There are also other modules
that are whenever you use your telekinesis and hit an
enemy with it, they are briefly frozen, or you do
extra damage to enemies that are on fire, and so
those kind of like ramp up in a very natural
and really fun way. There's also some really broken ones
that I've seen on Blue Sky, where the module the
more that you increase your fov slider in the graphics setting,
the faster you move. And there are other ones that
are the higher your frame rate is, the higher damage
you do in the game. There's some really like game
breaking things that are really exciting icy. Yeah, I have
not gotten as Yeah, but that's kind of definitely like
a carrot on the stick for me.
Speaker 6: Just to be clear, are we sure that that's actually
a thing and not a joke, but a joke.
Speaker 1: But no, no, that is very crazy.
Speaker 5: I love that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then there are the other these other sockets
that are multiplier sockets. And so let's say you have
like a I had one socket that was like, if
you press F, you will shoot a missile cluster down
on the ground, like you'll kind of call on an
air strike. And then I found a multiplier where I
had to slot. Let's say my my missile was on
the right, and I had a modifier that would go
into the left of it and it would multiply that
effect three times. And so now when I press the
F button, I shoot down three missile clusters. But you
can apply that to whichever effect you want, so if
you wanted to, I did one where I had a
modifier where my the I mean, the recoil on this
gun was ridiculous, and I cranked it up even more
in exchange for extra damage, and then I added a
three times modifier on that. So like every time I
shoot this pistol, it's like I'm shooting like a bazook down,
but I'm doing like this ridiculous damage. And there's some
really great recipes and there's that's like really where a
lot of like the theory crafting and like the character
building comes into play and all of that on top
of it. FPS that feels honestly just incredible.
Speaker 3: It's it.
Speaker 1: One of my friends, Jesse Vittelli, was like, this is
what Marathon should have been. I was like, Oh, that's funny. Yeah, sure,
Like it's very much got that like that aesthetic, right,
and I'm I'm really digging it. I'm only probably an
hour in, but I'm gonna be playing more tonight. I'll
tell you that. Like it's it's really neat. It's called
Void Breaker. It's in Steam Early Access. But if you're
kind of looking for something that feels really fresh and
and just really playful, I think this is this is
one to watch or if you're cool. I know some
people avoid early access stuff, but it feels really polished
and I'm really liking it. I can't recommend it enough.
I'm excited to come back next week and hopefully I've
stumbled on some of those more broken builds. I really
want to get the FPS one.
Speaker 4: Yeah, early access, right, is there a timeline for a
release or it's probably not?
Speaker 1: There might be I'm not familiar with it, to be honest,
if there is. But yeah, that one's called Void Breaker,
and I very much recommend it. I think next week
Eric's going to be on the show. I think we
might talk about Deadlock. They've just released a huge update
for that game, a bunch of new characters, they reworked
a lot of it. And I also want to talk
some magic next week, but I think that's gonna do
it for this episode. Mike, thank you so much for
joining us and for taking the time out of your
busy schedule. Where can people find you find your work?
Is there anything want to plug? Yeah, anything you're working on.
Speaker 5: You can find most of my stuff. If you just
search at Mike d that'll probably get you in my
social media page. Good game, No rematch. It's available everywhere
in most English speaking countries at this point. I believe
we finally got it out in the UK last month
or in July rather. And yeah, digital audio, hardcover. Also,
when does this podcast come out?
Speaker 1: It'll come out later this week on Thursday.
Speaker 5: On Thursday, September fourth. If you're in New York City,
I'm doing my bad video game show called shit Arcade
at Union Hall. Oh I saw that years.
Speaker 1: Ago Yeah, I highly recommend that. That is awesome.
Speaker 5: It's so much fun. I have spent like two hundred
dollars on eBay buying new bad games. So you know,
Wayne's World on the Super Nintendo. Probably going to bring
back Balls three D just because everyone loves that. It's
going to be a really fun, bad video game show.
We've got some amazing comedians on it, like Josh Gondlman
and Dina Hashem. So yeah, if you're in New York,
check it out September fourth at Union Hall.
Speaker 1: All hit it up.
Speaker 4: Charles, Charles's mother, I think is I also, I do
want to plug We didn't talk about it extensively, but
I do want to plug. Mike's piece in the new
issue where you just you just talked to a bunch
of you spent what like three or four hour long
phone calls with ROBERTA. Williams, and you broke this really
great funny feature about just like what it's like to
meet your heroes and stuff. I really, I really like
how that piece came together. So it's if you're a subscriber,
you can read it the digital version. It'll be in
the Ninja Guy and four issue gameforma dot com slash subscribe.
Thanks for thanks for doing that, Mike.
Speaker 5: I think, of course, no, thank you for setting that up.
Speaker 6: Man.
Speaker 5: That was honestly, meeting ROBERTA. Williams was like the conversation
of a lifetime. That was so great.
Speaker 4: Oh good, good.
Speaker 6: It's also it's it's good in that it's very Mike like.
I feel like we have a lot of when we
have freelancers come in. Everyone has their own voice, but
I feel like his was a very strong, personal author voice.
I don't think there there'd be any confusion anyone else
wrote that piece. That's I think that's really cool.
Speaker 1: Love that well Again, if you are interested in picking
up that issue, head over to gaminformer dot com slash
subscribe that I'll get you all the details. I think
there might be a promotion running right now so you
can pick it up a little cheaper. But yeah, that
would greatly. That's the best way to keep the lights on.
Help us out. Second best way is to share the
show with a friend and review the podcast on your
podcast platform of choice. Kyle Charles, Mike, thank you for
joining me. Follow Charles at Chuck Tuck three six five
and follow Kyle Hilliard at Kyle Hilliard on Blue Sky. Yeah,
that's really you can follow me at it's Van Aiken.
Don't forget to follow Mike as well and Game Informer
while you're at it. But that's gonna be it for
the show this week. We really appreciate your support. Uh,
and go follow Mike, go follow his work. If you're
in New York, go check out his show next week,
and uh, we'll catch you all next week. Have a
good one, I te