Speaker 1: Hey, everybody. Welcome to the Game Informer Show, a weekly
podcast covering the video game industry. You can join us
every Thursday for discussion but the latest in gaming news, reviews,
and exclusive reveals, alongside Game and form more staff and
special guests from around the industry. I'm one of your
hosts today in person with our other two hosts, I'm
Alex van Aikin. By the way, I'm joined by Charles Hart.
How you doing, Charles, I'm good.
Speaker 2: I'm full time now, which means i'll never leave.
Speaker 1: And you're at events at events. Yeah, that's awesome.
Speaker 2: Hitting the town.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, we're gonna be talking switch to We've got
Rogers Base joining us later, and then we're gonna be
talking about summer game fests alongside Marcus Stewart.
Speaker 3: Hello, look at us in person. This doesn't happen very often.
Speaker 2: No, it doesn't.
Speaker 1: We gotta cherish it.
Speaker 3: I know the first time I've gotten to meet Charles
in person. And mythical height, Yes you are.
Speaker 1: I have noticed, Charles, you have longer legs because Torso, Yeah, Torso.
Speaker 3: You We were trying to figure out what kind of
tall you were.
Speaker 4: If I'm kind of like, I'm kind of built like
Mike Wazowski if you had a head on top of
his other head, you know where it's like it's mostly
limbs and then kind of like a little Torso, can.
Speaker 3: We do like a live like like height comparison, like
can we stand between the two of us?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Can we? Would it be funnier to see him out
of frame for like us?
Speaker 2: We can cut in a clip of us.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we'll put in a clip for people that were wondering,
like how tall Charles actually is on in the video version,
you can put the door.
Speaker 1: I don't want to forget, so let's do it right now.
Speaker 3: Okay, we're doing it now. We're standing up, everybody. Here
we goes, we're standing right, stand up. I got checked
dramatically at the same time. Right angle and here we go.
We're standing up. Audio listeners are standing up. I'm looking
at Charles.
Speaker 1: Okay, this angle makes it look ridiculously for audio listeners, Like,
because I'm six.
Speaker 2: What do you want to go over to the door?
I think that's like a comparison. You don't think so everyone?
Speaker 3: And I'm six, okay, yeah, so like my shoulders are
significantly lower than your shoulders differ and yeah, for audio listeners.
I'm like, it's it feels cool. I guess look up
at this and it's I don't know if it's funnier
because you're significantly taller, but it's also a significant a
significant age gap between us, and not that that really
should play a factor in height, but there is like
a semi humors sort of like there's something about that dynamic.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, it's pretty come for me. I'm
I'm the smallest and the biggest at the same time. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: A Little big Man good, uh Dustin Hoffman movie.
Speaker 1: I love Little big Man too, where you could create
the levels.
Speaker 3: You know, I thought you were gonna I don't know why.
I thought you're gonna make a what was the Marlon
Wayne's movie? Or He's a baby like the two thousand.
It's like we man email about you.
Speaker 6: You know, brought up.
Speaker 1: I do not remember thet.
Speaker 3: I know, talking about not a good movie. You don't
want to you know, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: Oh god, wow, yeah.
Speaker 2: Can we talk about a video game? Yeah, let's talk
about video game. Last time we talked about.
Speaker 1: Blackfish in the documentary and a bunch of non video games.
Speaker 3: We got to come up with a new weird obscure.
Speaker 2: Yeah, film every.
Speaker 3: Time bad Marlon Wayne's movie.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we Baby, What was it called?
Speaker 3: Little No No no, no no no.
Speaker 2: I like it better? We Baby, we Baby. He's a
wee baby because the video game.
Speaker 3: That sounds like a cool phrase like we baby, we Baby.
Speaker 4: That'd be a good wrapper ad lib baby.
Speaker 2: Okay, now it's not We're moving on.
Speaker 3: Entire That's what he's trying to say.
Speaker 4: It's it's like, what time does become my catchphrase? I'll
integrated into the show. It make sentence.
Speaker 1: It's ten pm on Sunday of Summer Game Fest.
Speaker 2: Marcus. You and I went to June. Thank you. Marcus.
Speaker 1: You and I went to an Xbox invite only event today.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Xbox showcase earlier today.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, you played Ninja guid In four. I went
hands on with the Xbox ally the rog Xbox ally X,
which is like the beefy new handheld, one of two
coming later this holiday that was officially announced during their showcase.
I played Outer Worlds two. I also played Grounded two.
We'll get into that later, Charles or yeah, well I'm
gonna get to you in a second, Charles. But Marcus,
he also played Pragmatta, the Resident Evil Requiem, anything else
that we're gonna touch on.
Speaker 3: Those are probably the big three.
Speaker 2: Okay, yeah, Charles, what about you? What have you been
playing this week? I think the main ones I can
talk about the stuff I did at Anna Perna. So I
played uh More Souls, which was great. Yeah. I played
a game called Snap and Grab, which I think was
revealed this week.
Speaker 4: Uh And I played Mixtape, which Mixtape is one of
those games that I've been excited for. I didn't know
if a demo was going to do a justice and
now I'm like, I was really impressive with them, which
is great.
Speaker 1: Cool, And like I said at the top, we're going
to we have Rogers Base joining in us later taking
my spot on the podcast. But it'll be a good
time diving into the Switch too. Marcus is going to
show off his first reactions to the Switch too, Yes,
QVC style.
Speaker 3: I think, yeah, the first time I've ever held a
switch too, because mine has not come into mail at
the time we're recording.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and to be clear, we already recorded that segment.
That's why I know it turns out like a QBC
esque show. But Marcus, let's get into yours. I think
you've got like the big heavy hitters this week. I
mean Pragmata, Resident Evil. Which one do you want to
start with?
Speaker 3: Let's start with Resident Evil.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we got it's.
Speaker 3: The big one, right, it's probably of all the new
game reveals that's probably up there. Yeah. So we havecom
had a theater presentation where we got to see thirty
minutes of Hands Off, just like a straight gameplay demo
of the game that takes place imediately after the end
of the revealed trailer, where you see Grace Ashcroft, our
new protagonist, and a sticky situation trapped in this what
appears to be a sort of like hospital, maybe psych
ward somewhere in there, it's unclear, but like in a mansion,
like those old like hospital mansions basically, yeah, you know
the ones.
Speaker 1: Like the ones infirmaries. I was born in one, Yeah,
the one that they actually.
Speaker 2: Have. You did insane Lord drop casually in conversation.
Speaker 1: It's like a mixture of like an orphanage and infirmary
and a hospital.
Speaker 3: Like an amalgamation of those things, just like old creepy building. Yeah.
So we got to watch footage of that, and then
I got to play behind Closed Doors demo of that
same section, so got hands on time and Residueva Requiem
as we know as the director of Resident Evil seven
behind it. And I will say right off the bat,
the game is very Resident Evil seven coded, at least
in his demo. And you know, and by that, I
mean you know seven was very much like like Tensions scares,
Like it was like we're taking away a lot of
your defenses and you're really just trying to run and
hide from these things. And it feels like that immediately
where you know, it begins with Grace escaping from her
restraints that you see in the trailer, and then the
moment you open the first door, you just see pitch
black darkness in this hallway and it's just like it's
almost mean spirited because it's like you have nothing in your.
Speaker 2: Inventory, idiot, you thought you got out.
Speaker 3: You have to leave the safety of the only lit
room that you can see. Yeah, and you immediately start
hearing just like a lot of untid Like the sound
design is on point, playing with headphones of course, and
you're just hearing all these weird bumps and creeks and
you're just like, I don't know what is like a
threat or what is just old house noises and it's like,
all right, I'm in and you're making a way through
the mansion, and I'll have a you know, written preview
about this as well. I won't spoil too much, but
there is a The only enemy I came across in
this demo was a new persistent enemy, so kind of
in the vein of a mister X or a lady dematress.
There is a new, very horrifying creature in this house.
The best actually I know, I've said Resident Evil seven,
but another great comparison to what I played is the
Dollhouse in resid Evil Village in terms of just like
the vibe and what you have to do during this
section of like you're in this largely dark area, the
lights are unreliable, Like you turn some on and then
maybe it will go a bit, it'll stay on for
a bit and it turns off. The only things I
found I found there's no combat in this demo whatsoever.
Capcom during the presentation made a point to say, hey,
Grace is not really a great fighter. It's not her
thing necessarily, even though she works for the FBI. So
it was really interesting how there was no combat. I
never got a weapon. I got a bottle that I
could throw to distract enemies. Other than that, I found
a lighter and that kind of became my things. I
got to go into this like pitch dark room. I
have this light of his lighter, and then I'm running
into this creature that gets around the house by escaping
into the ceiling and so like. And it also does
the thing of it does the jackar ducks kind of thing. No,
it's literally just like when you'll notice sometimes when you
look up you'll see just like holes in the ceiling
like it has like punched his way through, and you're like, okay,
that's probably not a good sign. And you can hear
it moving around up there.
Speaker 2: What does the sound?
Speaker 1: Is it like a scurry as well?
Speaker 3: No, it's a big like this creature is literally like
it barely fits in the hallway. It's doing like the
kind of like hunch as. So you're hearing like boom boom,
and you can see the light shaking if it's like
over like a lamp or like a chandelier or something. God,
and you know, and there's a little bit of peats.
You're gonna hallways and you'll see like the and they're like, Okay,
I don't know, Pete has like I think of that
now when I think of like shaky scary lan amps.
But it was like a short. It was like a
thirty minute segment. Like I said, I'm just you're just
trying to escape this section. Basically, it's like you're trying
to find a fuse box to open a gate that's
blocking the rest of the I guess the rest of
the hospital slash mansion, whatever it is, and just trying
to like I'm just trying to dodge this thing, like
I'm sneaking around trying to distract it.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 3: There is a trick to it that I cannot spoil
in terms of like what you need to do to
stay away from it. And then it's but it plays
super well. It plays like Resident Evil like I did
like the Resident Evil. Think like, oh, here's a locked
door that needs a special key that has like a
chair up on it. I got to find the chairup key.
I got to you know, like mention, like I got
to find a fuse for a fuse box. Like it's
hitting the greatest hits of Resident Evil, and so it's
like there was nothing in this demo that was like,
WHOA never seen this before? It's just like, all right,
locked in this thing is terrifying. I'm ready for another
one of these. You know, they've been they've had a
steady cadence of like when we get a new one
and that like cool down meter of like it's been
a long time since Village and you know RI four
was great two, But in terms of like we're back
to the numbered ones, the first person ones. It's terrifying. However, say,
first person, this is maybe the only demo I've ever
seen where the one last thing was a menu option.
So we see the conclusion of the demo in the
theater presentation, and then it makes a point to show
someone going into the menu, going to the options and
toggling a new option to go from first to third person.
So for the first time and residue of a wreck
way on, you can play the game in either first
person or third person, and you can switch between the
two at any time while you're playing. It's like on
the fly. So when I played my demo, so the
demo or the presentation, it was in first person. So
I made a point to play most of my demo
in third person, just to see the differences, and there's
no like gameplay difference, like you know, even like some
of the cutscenes that were in first person or like
in third and then other ones are still in first person.
That it kind of depends on, like this is this
was framed in first person. That's like jump scare, So
we're just going to keep that the same. But there
was like one instance where like you open a closet
in a room and it's like not a story thing,
and like a lamp falls out, and it's like, oh,
it is like a jump scare, but like I played
it again third person and you just see grace kind
of like same thing, but just like like oh okay,
So maybe there's little things where they do shift the
camera a little bit, but yeah. It was also interesting
is that in the menu they say for first person
it's labeled as recommended experience. So I guess it's like
it's scarier because first person is scarier. But it is
cool to finally have the option and just to be
able to switch freely between the two. But yeah, also some.
Speaker 1: People can't play first person games that too. Most of
thickness that kind of thing exactly.
Speaker 2: So you what do you think you're going to be
doing I'm doing first first.
Speaker 3: It's kind of like they've had this cadence for a
while of like new game remake, new game remake, where
it's like the remakes are always third person because that's
what those games were, and to me, like meinline Residentaval
now is first person, and since we don't get this
all the time, I want to play first person. And
also I'm a horror guy. I want to be scared second.
That would be like a second player thing for third
person I need. But yeah, I'm excited for it's doing
what I want from Resident Evil. It seems it looks
great and yeah, I'm psyched.
Speaker 2: Hell yeah.
Speaker 1: You also at Capcom you played Pragmata. Yeah, which was
when was that first revealed?
Speaker 3: So I had to look it up. Yeah, twenty twenty
at the PlayStation five reveal event.
Speaker 2: Okay, yeah, oh weird? Did what did we see there?
Speaker 1: If it's like the space astronaut guy with the little girl, Yeah,
and I feel like they were hovering over a city
or something.
Speaker 3: They were on Earth, like you saw like they were
space and then it was like on Earth, which that
mood piece. I wonder what how much of that is
representative the game, or if it was just a tone piece,
especially at this point. Yeah. But so the premise of
the game is that you play a guy named Hugh
Williams who is like the astronaut guy, and the idea
is that he's him and a team are sent to
this lunar research station on the Moon where or for
whatever reason, and oh, actually because there was like it
went silent suddenly, like, oh, we're not hearing back from
these guys, go up there to see what happened. You
get there, there's some sort of like like a quake,
it said, and a demo like like an earthquake on
the Moon. I don't know, but it was like and
it devastates everything. He gets hurt, and then kind of
where my demo starting is, I got the play Pragmata
is where Hugh was kind of like injured. And then
the little girl Diana, who is not actually a girl
but as an android that just looks like a young girl,
she finds you and patches you up, and you guys
just work together to try to escape back to Earth.
And the problem is that you're trapped on the station
where there's this AI that has kind of like mistaken
you as threats and is kind of like unleash its
security systems, which you're.
Speaker 4: Like, is that what the There was like an intro
to the trailer that was like an AI corporation. Yeah,
it's like it occurred to me that that was the
robots that are turning against you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's like this AI is like seeking these robots. Yeah, okay, yeah, probably,
so you're fighting like the primary enemies at least from
what I've seen, are just like the just a bunch
of different types of like just robots. Okay, So it's
a third person over the shoulder style shooter plays very well.
The big twist would pragm out as that because you
have Diana, the girl. She's on your back kind of
piggyback riding you the whole game, and her ability is
that she can hack into everything, and so it plays
in the combat where you have to hack every enemy
before you can kill them.
Speaker 1: Interesting, And is this like a atrius creator like you
have a you play as creatus, we have an Atrius button.
Speaker 3: No, it's a lot more like it's like playing a
normal third person shooter or yeah, like it doesn't feel
like feels like he feels more like a separate character
because he has a dedicated there's like a dedicated atreyas button. Yeah,
where this just feels like, oh Diana like this her
abilities could have been one person, but because we see
two people represented, then we know what's her doing. So
like her thing is like when you're aiming like with
L two as you do in a shooter, she'll like
point like she'll do the thing with her hand where
she shoots like her hacking beam, and then it hacks
into the targets and it brings up in real time
this hacking menu that it's going to be triggy to
describe it. I haven't seen anything quite like it. But
it's like a three by three grid like imagine like
a phone dial pad a little bit, and you see
a green node. And the idea is that you're using
the face buttons as like the D pad, So each
face button is a cardinal direction, and you're trying to
guide a cursor down like each square to get to
the green pad, which completes the hack. But then along
the way there are blue squares and you need to
hit those blue squares en route to the green one
to finish it. As far as I could tell, And
also you don't have to hit all of them, and
I think because they have a stacking effect, where like
every successive square that you hit of the same one
stacks its effect. From what I could tell playing it,
I think the blue ones or the basic ones. I
think the more that you hit on the way, the
longer the robots becomes stunned, because when you hack them,
they're stunned for a second. Yeah, and then because they're
covered in armor, which if you just try to shoot
them with their armor, the bullish just kind of ricochet.
But once they're hacked, their armor just kind of opens
up and then exploses all these different like vulnerable targets
for you to just blast apart with your guns.
Speaker 2: Are they still like moving around after they're open up?
Speaker 3: No, they're just like stopped for a second. Okay, But
like I mentioned before, the hacking mini game happens in
real time, Like, so you have to do this while
like dodging enemies like they're coming at you. See, you
have to try to find like okay, I'm doing it,
you know, I might have to dodge in the middle
of it. Like you can still do stuff and cancel
out of the hack if you need to like you
have a dodged thing where you're like because your students
like rocket boost, Yes, you do like a thing out
of there, and it's really cool, Like it's it takes
a little getting used to, but it gels quicker than
you might think, and it sounds weird to describe some
one of these things, like you kind of have to
play it to really wrap your head around it. And
in the demo, the only like variation I saw of
it was eventually unlocked the yellow node, whereas if you
hit the yellow nodes when you complete the hack, it
lowers your defense too. But since the placement of each
node changed with each hack, so some hacks are easier
than others to hit all of them, And you kind
of have to make the decision in real time of
like am I going to go for every color node
on the way to the green one to get like maximum,
like you know all these maybe status effects I can
inflict before I shoot them, or do I have time
to do it because I need to get out of
this menu now because they're coming at me. Yeah, and
I just need to maybe just get one and just
get to the end. And that was like a really
fun sort of bound like added this very frantic kind
of pace. So what is otherwise like pretty like standard
like third person over the shoulder firefights like the guns
that you had. He has like a pretty much a handgun,
pretty much a shotgun. And then the most unique weapon
I had was called the stasis net and it fires
this like energy field where anything caught within it they're
just like frozen for a second, which is perfect because
they're like, oh, I freeze this guy. I can hack him,
but I like unimpeded, and then do my thing.
Speaker 4: Do you think that it's gonna turn people off the
hacking thing? Like having to do that mid combat isn't
enough of a puzzle you have to solve while doing it.
You have to think about it that there's going to
be people that are like, oh, I just wanted to
play like a shooter.
Speaker 3: I mean, I guess so I could see that if
you just want to go in there and shoot things.
My only concern too. And also and majure, like sometimes
the square and the there's sometimes there as squares that
you can't pass by, so you have to find like
a route around it. Like it's just like here's a
little blockade, and if you're going like slow motion. Is
it stopping completely?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 3: Not really? Okay, yeah, but it takes like two seconds
like like when you see it, like and maybe like
I have.
Speaker 1: Combos almost but but to you know, get through I.
Speaker 3: Imagine it's like it's not maybe not one to one,
but like entering the uh the in hell divers the
like oh yes, codes of like I need to do
just real quickly to get this and like that fluff
like that doesn't really break up the flow as much
as you would think it is. It kind of has
that of like it sounds it's quicker than you would
think when you're like on your shit, you know.
Speaker 6: Yeah, dis mess it up.
Speaker 3: It's like, oh damn, it is that too? Like and
because yeah and uh and it's not just combat too
like a lot of the puzzles I found had different
types of hacking mini games that are all just different
button prompts of Like one was like, okay, here's like
a radio menu with different cardinal buttons that you need
to hit. You need to hit them in a certain
order of succession, but you have like five six to
do it. So again it's reflex of like okay, I
think it's X circle square Okay, now this door is open.
There was like one door that had like five different
hacks I had to go search the environment to find
before I could go back and open it or get
through it.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 3: Diana can also scan the environment so you can find
like collectibles and also it reveals the waypoint of like
where you need to go. The environment that I was
in was like pretty limb, not I would say pretty linear.
I guess like there were some like rooms you can
go into. You're finding like emails and and like notes
from people. There's like one hologram projection of the crew,
but you know, it's like very much just space station
is like falling apart, so you're wondering like where everyone
is and stuff like that. But it looked fantastic. And
the way the like the combat feel great, and the
way the enemies explode into like just this cacophony of
metal and stuff. It reminded me a lot of Binary Domain,
which is a very one.
Speaker 2: Of my favorite games.
Speaker 3: It was like it was a Sega game from like
twenty ten or twenty eleven. Do you know no, No, okay,
well the real ones no binary.
Speaker 2: Domain, Binary Domain. I'm sorry.
Speaker 3: Yes, I have squads like cover shooter robots in the future. Yeah,
but it had that vibe of just like, oh, these
robots blew up real good. I like that it feels
good to shoot these robots. But to your point about
the concern, the only concern I have is like, will
you get tired of like everything I.
Speaker 2: Shoot has to be yeah first yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: But the having the status effect notes like gives me
some hope that like they're gonna mix that up throughout
the game. But like, oh, different types of notes, are.
Speaker 1: There skill trees that might like help you speed up?
Speaker 4: I was gonna say, no idea how progression looks, because
there see you getting like an item that's like enemies
of a certain tier and lower you don't have to
hack anymore at hack, you know, Yeah, I like the
bigger ones you have to I never got to see
like any sort of progression.
Speaker 3: Don't know if you're equipping things. I don't know if
you're like leveling up, like I have no idea if
how you're like augmenting Hugh himself or Diana for that matter.
But no, it was a it's a cool twist, like
it's like, Okay, I don't think i've quite seen this
in like a shooter before and it looks fantastic, just
like fidelity wise, like it's a cool looking game. But yeah,
I'm pretty high on it, like I'm excited for it,
you know, and also just as a proof of life, like, Okay,
this game is real. I play this game. It exists.
I think it's gonna come out, so.
Speaker 4: That like anti reveal trailer that they did for two
years ago, Yeah, in twenty twenty three, one of the
funniest number showcase was me and I thought, like when
they did the fake out of Resident Evil nine at
the showcase this year, I was like, if Capcom does.
Speaker 2: This twice where they're like, we're not going.
Speaker 4: To show you the game this year, but they're a
little trailer about how we're not going to show it
to you, Yeah, I was like that would have been
really funny, but they didn't and it was good. And
now that this is playing, I'm like, Okay, we're like
we're back on track.
Speaker 2: I feel good.
Speaker 3: I just want to know what team in Capcom is
making sure. Yeah, we know, like we've been to Capcom
like in Osaka and he's always like, oh, you know,
we have the double mccry team, the Monster Hunter Team,
the Resident Evil Team, the Mega Man Team. It's like,
who is doing this one?
Speaker 2: What was it?
Speaker 4: What was a Capcom game that was like pre twenty
twenty oh, pre twenty twenty.
Speaker 2: Like because that was when we first heard about this.
Speaker 3: Right, well twenty twenty, yeah, it was when we first
heard of that, so like pre I mean Resident Evil
seven would have been out, Monster Hunter World was out. Yeah, uh,
street we hadn't gone Street Fighter six yet, and you
know that's a team to the Street Fighters. Yeah yeah,
so yeah, I don't know, Like I mean, the Mega
the Team, I don't know what they do. The Exo what.
Speaker 1: An Exo Primal team obviously honestly, well one.
Speaker 3: Of the main Exo Primal developers is on ony Musha.
Speaker 2: Okay, yeah do they have so think it's.
Speaker 3: Actually the combat designer from Exo primas on. I mean
I spoke to them. Also, the combat in that game
was awesome. That was the other theater presentation I saw
was ony Musha. That game looks like bad ass hell
yeah yeah.
Speaker 2: Well cool.
Speaker 1: Well I Xbox today I went hands on with the.
Speaker 2: The alb say the full name, don't think about.
Speaker 1: It, the a Zeus r O G Xbox ally, sorry,
what does the RG stand for Republican Gamers? As a zeus,
isn't it asis?
Speaker 3: Are you saying A s A s U s right?
The company, isn't it?
Speaker 4: I've always heard I think like a zeus, like it
is like a word in Spanish, probably like Jesus dude.
Speaker 1: I can't say a treas, and I can't say, well, no.
Speaker 3: You said areas said I said as like atrium, Yeah,
because it as a asis.
Speaker 1: I I played the thing, yeah, eight minutes, okay, what'd
you play?
Speaker 2: I played Gears of War reloaded on it. Okay, that
was all I was allowed to play on it. Yeah,
and it ran like Gears of War?
Speaker 3: You know? It was the big is it? It's like
steam deck size.
Speaker 2: Or I saw it's it's seven hundred grams, is the.
Speaker 1: Way I felt exactly like seven out of grams was
gonna say the steam deck.
Speaker 4: Steam deck is six hundred and sixty grams, so it's
header steam deck.
Speaker 2: Definitely, it did feel it feel it felt weighty.
Speaker 1: I feel like it didn't feel as quite as long
as a steam deck, but it's.
Speaker 2: Probably the same.
Speaker 3: It's probably very close denser.
Speaker 1: I think it was just more organized or ergonomically comfort
more ergonomically comfortable. Uh, and so my hands kind of
like since you have the grid, since it kind of
felt like maybe that was like lending to like it
didn't feel cramped or it felt it felt good.
Speaker 2: Were you standing, sitting, sitting, sitting?
Speaker 1: I was sitting in the hand that person came up
behind me with it and handed it to me as
they were talking.
Speaker 3: Did you like a reach around the wait? Did you just?
Speaker 1: They whispered, They're like, my name is Actually it's really funny,
because it's really funny because they for some reason, instead
of handling they had two in their hand, one for
me and one for the person next to me, and
instead of using your left hand to give it to
the person on your left in the right hand on
the right, they like weirdly switched them.
Speaker 3: And so they were like that wasn't necessary.
Speaker 2: They were like they.
Speaker 1: Were like clearly like, oh I did my hands wrong,
but I've committed to this, yes, And it was like,
this is funny, but yeah, I played the thing. It
feels comfortable, it's it's weighty. You feel you definitely noticed
the weight difference.
Speaker 3: How long did you play for? I was going to ask,
did you feel like no.
Speaker 1: I there was like ten of us in the room
all playing. They kind of walked us through a guided
sort of demo of it. So we started off on
the home screen. They kind of show you how you
can navigate. There's a dedicated Xbox button which is sort
of your guide button. You open it up, you get
the game bar, which is where you can access settings
for the device, like system level settings for like carving
out performance, that kind of thing. They are booting straight
and when you open the device, it boots straight into
a full screen experience. So you aren't seeing a desktop,
you're not seeing the task far isn't loading. And they're
doing that because it saves I think they said two
gigabytes of internal memory are saved by not going to
the desktop, and that two gigabytes is instead given to
the handheld to run games better. Also, it uses one
third of the power that it would if it would
be booting into the desktop.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I didn't realize such a power intensive thing.
Speaker 1: I think it's because it's like, yeah, yeah, just the
way that it works. Yeah, And so they are like
very very much looking at a system level, what is
what do we actually need on this thing to make
this good, but so yeah, there's.
Speaker 2: A dedicated Xbox on them. There's a dedicated.
Speaker 1: Library button, so that no matter where you're at in
a game, you could be you can be on you
can also it also runs you know, it's a computer,
so you can open discord on it and talk to people.
There's a button you can I think if you hold
the Xbox button it almost all it looks like an
alt tab and so you can switch quickly between your
open programs. And there's there's like, uh, you know, kind
of quick resume kind of style stuff. You know, it
sinks across various devices. Really interesting if you if you
use that Xbox button to pull up the quick bar,
you can see you can right underneath it pulls up
your most recent you know stuff, so it's the most
recent games. And then right under that. I'm not sure
if it's most recent apps or if they're pinned there
or what, but when I was playing it, I pressed
the Xbox button. Just under my recent games was a
link to a Steam a Steam icon.
Speaker 2: There's like natively in.
Speaker 1: The os, like like as if you know, it was
just another app.
Speaker 6: I heard.
Speaker 1: Rumor of one journalist in a different section like trying
to like press that because you weren't supposed to go
and look at Steam. And I heard from somebody else
in the room that was like, oh yeah, this person
like tried to like sign into Steam and stuff.
Speaker 3: But like that person was never seen again.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but from from that story, it seems like, yeah,
you just like open Steam and you log in just
like you would on a computer.
Speaker 2: But oh, what's up, say.
Speaker 3: Like just because it's a handheld computer like Steam is like,
do you think anyone's ever trying to do like actual
computer work on like their Steam.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I know people that have, yes, a good idea.
They are sick of.
Speaker 3: Not only handhold gaming, but handheld working, sick of you.
Speaker 2: Also, you can hook up like a keyboard to it
or a keyboard mouse.
Speaker 3: Do you say that's too much? It's like just get
a you have a laptop or a computer, Like, no,
don't do it. Maybe you don't, I don't know.
Speaker 2: Yeah it is weird.
Speaker 1: Yeah, But also like that that cross store functionality kind
of extends to your library in general, so you'll just
see when you're in your when you're accessing your library again,
dedicated button to open it, you'll see all your games
that you own and underneath of it if it belongs
to like they had Hearthstone installed, and it was like
they had a little it said battle Battle.
Speaker 2: Neet just underneath that.
Speaker 1: So like a sense of obviously like in our demo
they I don't think they had any Steam games installed.
I think it's probably a little they probably try to
avoid that, like legal reasons with their marketing. That's why
you don't see it in the main video because it's
not their property.
Speaker 2: Though uh no it wasn't. I don't think.
Speaker 1: I don't think I could have easily missed it.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I also bet like they had an assult games because
they just set up a bunch of ones for press,
like they probably just pulled them up clean from the
other day.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, but yeah, so like you know, it'll it'll
tell you what where your game is from. But it
looks nice and neat like you would want it to
within your game library.
Speaker 2: But yeah, it played.
Speaker 1: It was comfortable to play, I'd say, like Gears of War,
wasn't It didn't blow me away like the screen Again,
they picked a very gray game.
Speaker 6: Gray and brown game.
Speaker 3: The first years is not really the most vibrant game.
Speaker 1: Yes, it did feel like just anecdotally, like you know,
compared to my switch to, which is my hotel room
over there, like it feels less vibrant than that. I know,
the switch To has like it's working with like h year,
it's ten ADP. I think it's like a seven and
the one I was playing was like a seven inch LCD.
Speaker 2: Yeah LCD.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and yeah, it didn't look amazing, but it looked
you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah bad, bad example, if you were trying to play
Mario KARTI.
Speaker 1: Probably yeah, yeah, I think I think it was. Part
of it was, oh, you're showing me Gears of War reloaded,
which is just the old games, you know, with with
four K textures. It doesn't really, it doesn't. It didn't
blow me away, but.
Speaker 3: Like a vow would have been a good one.
Speaker 7: That's a great So yeah, still need some more time
with it for like impressions from like the screen and
again it was so quick, like it was snappy, you know,
the menus were snappy.
Speaker 2: We were there, kind of showed us around the os
a lot.
Speaker 1: Gears I couldn't tell. It seemed like it was definitely
above thirty frames a second. I'm not sure. It didn't
quite feel like sixty to me.
Speaker 3: I think I was talking to Jacob Geller of mind
Max about it. He said it ran at four K
sixty for him, okay, but he was also like, like
that had always been the case of the game, because
it's the ultimate edition ran it four casic, sure what
this really is?
Speaker 1: It's like maybe I think what I'm used to playing
one hundred and twenty now is probably what it is.
I like PC and I'm like, oh this this must
be thirty.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and granted this is anecdotally don't take.
Speaker 1: It, yeah, take over the grain of salt, but yeah,
this is the screen looked serviceable. I would say, like it.
It looked good, you know, for what I expected. And
Blow Me Away doesn't look as good as the steam
Deck old ed obviously, yeah, nor the switch to screen.
It's probably comparable to the original steam Deck screen, although
for some reason I remember that being a little more vivid,
but maybe that's just rose tinted glasses.
Speaker 2: You know what do you like? Like?
Speaker 4: Have you played uh, there's other RG allies, right, there's.
Speaker 1: The this is this is this like essentially like almost
like it's almost yeah, yeah, have.
Speaker 2: You played those? Do you own an old steam Deck?
Speaker 1: I have not but I know friends who haven't asked
them a lot of questions about.
Speaker 2: It, and up until up until now, I.
Speaker 1: Really wanted to buy one of those because I really
played Windows games on it. I have played some other
competitors to the Steam Deck as well, but but not
the not the rog ally. But yeah, you know, I
I turned the speakers up a little bit again. It
was like this weird, very quiet meeting kind of and
they the main they had their they had their Xbox
ally hooked up to the TV and doc mode and
so they were playing Gears and it was coming through
the TV speaker. So I was like kind of like
trying to like not bother people, but also here, ye,
what was you said?
Speaker 2: Doc mode? Did they have like a dedicated.
Speaker 1: Document they they they had some sort of like USBC
at HDMI or something noticeable On the top of the thing.
Speaker 2: There's two USBC.
Speaker 1: Ports right next to each other, which is nice because
you know, you can plug up a lot of different stuff.
It's always such a pain in the butt when you
have just one of those. And now we see it
with the switch to right which on the top. On
the bottom, these were next to each other. On the top,
there's also a lot of other buttons on the thing,
Like I it didn't feel quite natural to hit start,
Like where you think start would be is where like
the library button is, and where you think select would
be is kind of where the Xbox.
Speaker 4: It's like higher or lower, like you're saying, relative to
your thumb positions.
Speaker 1: It's like they're not They're a little lower than I
think I'm used to and in their place where like
new buttons kind of. But yeah, there's also you know,
buttons on the back, two buttons on the back of it.
Speaker 2: But yeah, it felt good.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm excited to see more of that thing. You
don't know how much it costs, No, not yet, but
I would guess very pricey for the for the x
which is the better version we'll see. I know the
wrong ally, the original is not a cheap device, Like
you're talking seven eight hundred bucks for based on just memory,
based on what I can remember, But so I think
it'll be pretty pricey.
Speaker 2: But they do that.
Speaker 1: That that lower tier model that I'm guessing will be
like four hundred, five hundred.
Speaker 2: I don't know. That's just a guess, but yeah, the
thing was cool.
Speaker 1: I'm excited to say more it's definitely not like a
I must own this, yeah, but like it was pretty
dang close. Yeah, like just like the the the the
convenience that brings, Oh I can play nice Steam games
and my Windows games. Yeah, it's hard, it's hard games,
whereas Steam Deck, I'm kind of there are workarounds, but it's.
Speaker 2: Like it's not native. This is all native.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it was just just an idea that it's not
doing anything you have zero ability to do.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it makes just a little bit more convenient, And
that's one of those things that's always hard where it's
like do I need to spend hundreds hundreds of more
dollars for the convenience because I like the convenience. I
think that's like the challenge a lot of people are
going to have if you haven't if you don't have
an Xbox or a PC or whatever. Like this solves
a lot of those things.
Speaker 2: But it is like good.
Speaker 1: There is also like games will run better because it
is native, sure, running natively on the rights compared to
something on the Steam Deck that is like running through
like a layer, several layers.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Like I tried getting ub connect running on the
Steam Deck and it's paint in the button.
Speaker 1: And there's like just so many like little tools and
stuff that you're running to make that compatibility work. That's
you know, the game isn't running as well compared to
the runs natively on a Windows machine. You're good.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Hey everyone, we are back at our desk at home.
But we will return in the next segment back to
Los Angeles Inner Hotel room with our segment with Rogers
Base to talk about the switch to But in the meantime,
we have more Xbox games to talk about. Specifically, what
is now my game of the show, Ninja Guide in four.
Speaker 6: I got to Wow.
Speaker 3: Yes, I got to play a rather lengthy demo of
it at the Xbox booth that we call it a
booth like a building that they were in. I guess
they ran a sort of complex. Yeah, they ran it
out their own space because they got that kind of money.
But yes, I played Ninja Guiden for of course, this
is the first Ninja Guiden game in about over a decade.
Ninjagid in three got twenty eleven, twenty twelve, thirteen, something
like that. Wow. Not a well received game at the time,
which is one I'm happy to report that Ninja Gaiden
four is as good as it is For those that
don't know, this is actually developed by Platinum Games in
collaboration with Team Ninja, but Platinum is the primary developer.
Team Ninja's kind of just overseeing it and sort of
just giving them notes pretty much, which is really exciting
for me because I'm a stylish action siko. I love
both studios work. They're both to the best action game studios,
and that shows here with this game. You know, if
you haven't seen Ninja Got for you're playing as two protagonists.
You've got, of course, were you Hayabusa, but you've also
got a newcomer named Yakimo who is probably really the protagonist,
just based on just how the trailers and even some
of the press release stuff has sort of like positioned him.
We still have not seen a lot of you like
focused stuff in videos. So I played as this new
guy and it's just going through a level just then
this sort of cool, sort of like futuristic dare I say,
almost cyberpunky like city? And I wrote in my preview
that you can rate online now that you would never
guess that this was made by Platinum because it feels
like three D Ninja Gaiden like from the jump, and
that it was.
Speaker 2: The last thing that Platinum did. I'm trying, Is it
was it Banetta?
Speaker 3: No, they've done stuff since Baneta, Like the last Baneta
thing they did was Origins and then that was them. Yeah,
there's there's something in there. I feel like I'm forgetting
because you know, Platinum puts out stuff. Was it that
was a Babylon's Fall? Was that technically the last thing?
There has to be something after that, I hope because
that game is a lot of yeah you look it up,
but yes, it plays great. It plays like Ninja Guide,
and it feels as tight and fast paced as you
would expect. And this is something that is like in
terms of like what Platinum brought to the table. There's
a new system in the game called Blood Raven Moves,
where basically you can hold the left trigger while you attack,
and your store becomes this elongated kind of like Crimson
Blood version of itself, and it basically just deals like
stronger attacks, and it's dictated by this meter that builds
as you do your regular attacks, and the meter builds
very quickly, so it's always going up and down constantly,
so it's very easy to just weave blood attacks into
your regular combos. So it's just kind of like, oh,
you want like an extra punch. I don't know why.
Maybe it's because I'm just anime stuff, but it reminds
me of just activating Kyokin and Dragonball of like I'm
just gonna just like this is going to do like
twice the damage just regular punch because I'm turning red.
That's basically what this is. But it looks cool and
it's easy to execute, and it just like it adds
another strategy, especially good for dealing with crowds because of
how long the sword gets, it can hit just a
wire swath of the enemies. And then there's this other
new sort of like state that Yakama can enter called
berserk state, and it's another meter that builds up just
by doing stuff, but it builds up a lot slower.
But when you do fill it up, you click both
analog sticks and you basically go into like a rage
mode where you can just tear through enemies and you
can do what's called I believe a I think it's
a bloodbath kill, and it's basically you hold down the
attack button and you have to be careful with it
because you might still be getting attacked, but if you
can hold it down long enough, you basically do an
instant kill on any enemy, regardless of like their health,
and it kind of frames it as this like really
stylish frame, Like it just goes all red with like
black and white and you just see Yakma slice through
a Guiy's like, oh that guy, the's done, He's not
coming back.
Speaker 4: I really liked how how you're like, I think it's
called bloodbath killed Like it's such a such a visceral
grow testing. It's like I think it's called super Decapitator
murder slash. I can't remember.
Speaker 2: I just love that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that's what the prototype name was for
the Ninja guy.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Actually, yeah, there is a lot of that, Like it's
you know, Ninja Getting three. One of the things that
got a lot of slack for or crap for was
just sort of like the lack of like blood blood
basically like the lack of gore in the original version
of it. That's all back full force with this game.
You are slicing off limbs, you are chopping heads off.
There was blood everywhere constantly, and it all looks and
feels super great. You got like side quest now that
you can pick up. You got like a little like
talking terminal that you go to. It's like a I
don't know if it's an AI lady or if there's
someone on the other side, but you're going to her
constantly to kind of pick up missions. And it's like
from what I saw, like pretty light stuff like oh,
kill X number of enemies or like the weirdest thing
I did was searching for these weird little like living
jar creatures called Gordy's and they're just like just literally
just gords that are sent shiit. It gave me a
little bit of like elder ring vibes when I think
of like the po people. They don't look like them,
but it's just it's like nap ballpark, you know. So
it's like, oh, if you can search for levels social
level for these guys, you'll get some like extra points.
There's like a training room you can do. But yeah,
it's uh, it's a blast out of all the games
I played during Summer Games Fest, I was probably not
even probably I was like the most locked in to
this one. Like I was like, just leave me alone.
I know what I'm doing. I felt very cool because
I was, like, you know, playing Ninja guad in two
Black earlier this year helped sort of like dust off
my three D Ninja guidance skills, so I pretty much
slipped right into this. And so they have the developers,
like the lead designers from Platinum Anti Ninja in the
room watching and I felt really cool playing in front
of them because like hovering over our stations and I
was like, I know I'm doing super cool right now,
and I bet they're like, Wow, we didn't think this
guy would be as good as he is because we
just put this controller in front of him and he's
doing all these crazy combos and like spinning pile drivers
mid air, and I'm just like, yeah, I know what
this is.
Speaker 1: Okay, So it does the the I guess like language,
the feel of it all. What am I trying to say?
The muscle memory it is kind of carries over.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's weird, and I'm trying to tick you like
because it feels the way you would expect. Like I said,
if you didn't know Platinum was making this, you would
never tell. But at the same time, if you do
know that platinus making it, and you're a Platinum fan
like I am, there is like there is like subtleties
where it's like this feel I can feel the platinum
in this. It's it's I'm still trying to figure out
what it is. Maybe it's just something about just how
fast paced it is, even though traditional ninja guy always
has been you've got like a split second dodge you
can do, which is a bit platinum. Like it's not
like which time where it slows down time like in Banetto.
But though I hope there's an upgrade that turns it
into that, because that would be the most platinum thing,
but it's like even that feels like, oh, that seems
like something platinum would implement. But there's just little flourishes,
like there's a sidecaracter you can meet that you know
his presence because you see a little raven that has
red eyes and that reminds me of the familiars from Banetta.
So just like what if that's supposed to be like.
Speaker 1: A little I mean, it really seems like I mean,
if you can't really tell, if it's hard to tell,
then it like makes it seems like they did a
really good job. Then it yeah, you know, trying to
faithfully recreate this series.
Speaker 6: So that, I mean that's kind of cool as well.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, but yeah, this this game kicks so much ass.
Like I really can't stress enough how much fun this is.
Like if you're an Inja gund fan or just like
a stylish action officionado in general, you should absolutely have
this on your radar. I want to play it so bad.
I'm so glad you got a release date during a
showcase coming out October twentieth. I cannot wait to sit
down and just run through this thing.
Speaker 6: And it's so much fun, amazing, that's awesome.
Speaker 1: Well, Charles, you you went hands on with a couple
of Annapurna titles, right, I know, more souls as well
as mixtape.
Speaker 6: Do you want to talk about those?
Speaker 4: Yes, I'll do them in order of you mentioning them.
So we got more souls, which rules. I believe the
developer is named Furcula or Funkula.
Speaker 3: Like it's like fur Furcula. I think you got it
like Dracula, but.
Speaker 4: With fur yeah, which I think is like a type
of mushroom or something.
Speaker 2: Furcula. Yeah, that's what it is.
Speaker 3: Oh, is it really?
Speaker 4: I looked it up earlier and just mushroom pictures came up.
Speaker 2: Oh no, sorry, I made it up.
Speaker 4: Furcula is a forked bone found in most birds and
some species of non avian dinosaurs.
Speaker 3: That's very different than a mushroom.
Speaker 6: Yeah, were you just googling mushrooms?
Speaker 4: But I was probably just googling. I mean if you
looked at a really zoomed in picture of a bone
and a really zoomed in picture of a mushroom, which
among us could tell the difference.
Speaker 6: You know, Yeah, that's that's absolutely right.
Speaker 4: But so in morsels, you play as a tiny little
mouse and you get the ability to turn into mor souls,
which are just like little dudes that it's it's like
binding of Isaac is like the easiest comparison. So it's
like twin stick shooter. And then each morsel has a
different like firing pattern. So if you're a sunflower, you
have this like, uh, forked shot. There's another one that
has kind of like a melee move. There's one that
has just like a standard fire that's just like one
continuous blast.
Speaker 1: I know at one point when I played it in December, yeah,
I had unlocked a character.
Speaker 6: I don'tlocked a morsel. It was like a bubble bubble
blast kind of thing. Yeah, shot bubbles.
Speaker 4: They also have. Yeah, they all have a secondary fire too.
So there's the one, the first one that I think,
I don't know if it's supposed to be a poop,
but it kind of looks like a poop has like
a I think has a bubble.
Speaker 6: Power like like a poop emoji.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, it probably is. There's also
a little like a grub like a Maggie it that
leaves like damaging spots behind it that can also hurt you,
which I figured out very quickly, and I was like,
I cannot keep playing this guy because I'm I'm the
type of guy that will, like I can't use bombs
in a Zelda game like I do, and I do
it when I'm supposed to, but I will hurt. I
will blow myself up. Well yeah, no, I have at
all costs.
Speaker 2: Because I know I'm just gonna die.
Speaker 3: Is move out the way, you know, just.
Speaker 1: Throw.
Speaker 4: You think you'd think I would understand, and yet.
Speaker 6: Yeah, here we are.
Speaker 1: Just I mean, that's me playing Mario Kart. Not to
not to get the the timeline of this podcast all
messed up, but uh yeah, I mean whenever I throw
a bomb in Mario always yeah anyways, but so it
leaves a.
Speaker 4: Trail of like bullets behind you, and then if you
press the special button, they all home in on like
an enemy, which is really cool, so you'll hit them
with like ten shots at once. Anyways, the thing uh
so and also has like a really cool art style.
It has like a crt effect on the screen, so
it makes you feel like you're playing a weird old
like a Super Nintendo game. And then it's part Binding
of Isaac. It kind of parts Splunky in the way
that it has like these puzzles that go from floor
to floor and the roguelike that you're doing that you
might you might have no idea what a thing is
and you just have to do it, and then eventually
you'll be like, oh, I got to get the ticket
to give to the weird bus dude that's going to
take me to this place.
Speaker 2: It's going to do X Y Z.
Speaker 4: And then it's also kind of like Pokemon because you've
got all these morsels you're collecting. You can have three
in your inventory at once, and they all have separate
health bars, and if one dies then obviously you can't
use it anymore. But those are kind of like your lives,
so you can like swap between them. If one dies
and you get a new new one, then you have
like another life essentially, and it use them enough, they evolve,
which is cool, and they become more powerful. But I
don't know how many stages there are, but I was
sitting with the developer and he told me that if
you evolve them enough times, I don't know if it's
like to the third stage or like past the third.
Speaker 3: Stage, then they die.
Speaker 4: So they also have like a finite amount of usage.
So you can't just pick one morsel that you like
and then like ride with it the whole time. You
gotta like balance your way between them, or maybe you'll
be like, this guy's pretty close to dying potentially, so
I gotta swap it out with a fresh one, even
though it'll leave me weaker. So it's like an interesting dynamic.
Speaker 3: And when I just say it, that's just how humans work.
Speaker 2: That is just how humans work.
Speaker 4: Yeah, just on an accelerated timeline. But yeah, I really
liked it. It was a great demo game. Always nice roguelikes
make really good demos because you do one run and
you don't do very well and you're like, I feel
like I could do that again.
Speaker 2: And it's like, well, I guess.
Speaker 4: You have to buy the whole game, and I'm like, no,
it is part of steam Nextfest. I don't know if
that'll still be going on when this episode comes out,
but if you want to about yourself, you can for free,
and I recommend it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's also worth noting Toby Dixon is sort of
like the head honcho behind this game. I got a
chance to meet him and talk to him at another
anapern event that I mentioned in December, and Toby worked
on like Nidhog two and Atoma Crops and and you
can definitely see that art style that sort of like, uh,
really colorful, like everything's spilling with color.
Speaker 6: But there's a grunge to it. There's a everything such
as a texture.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's it's a really cool texture that everything has.
Speaker 3: It's swollen. The words like everything looks swollen.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, it's It's kind of like Toys for Boys
in the nineties and early two thousands, where it would
be like the girls get the little pet shop thing.
It's like, and the boys get this stinky trash.
Speaker 6: Monsters collect this stinky trash.
Speaker 3: Garbage too.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it kind of has that like so it's like
kind of nostalgic and like purposefully gross, but like not
so gross that it's actually gross, but just kind of
that esthetic.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think it's really well done, really pretty. Yes, there's
a gorgeous quality to it. Yeah, and of course the
the soundtrack being done by Sam Webster of Grindstone Fame.
I actually got to talk to talk to Sam in
Toronto back in January for for a trip for a
for a documentary I did on Grindstone. That's that'll be
coming out soon on my my personal project channel vport.
Speaker 6: But I was talking. I was talking to Sam about.
Speaker 1: Morsels and he was saying it was just so fun.
He's now he's doing sound design on it as well. Yeah,
and theyre's just they're having a ton of fun making
this game. And I can't wait to play it, to
play the full thing. It's gonna be really cool, I think.
Speaker 4: But sorry to rop what else you've been playing? Yeah,
the other one I played was Mixtape, which Marcus is like, Marcus,
is it fair to say you're like Game of the
show is Ninja guid for Yes, Okay, my Game of
the Show is mixtape, Alex, I don't know if you
claimed the game of the show. I think you told
us off camera probably outer worlds, but then you change.
Speaker 1: The outer worlds or Luminous Arise or thinke as thieves
despite not playing it.
Speaker 2: But mixtape mixtape was mine.
Speaker 4: I was already interested in it purely on vibes alone.
I honestly didn't really know this game was. I just
saw like a trailer and I was like, a nice
artistic coming of age story.
Speaker 2: Signed me up because I'll just play any game like that.
Speaker 3: Did you play Did you play the art full Escape
at all?
Speaker 2: I did not.
Speaker 3: I was like I was wondering, like did any of
that like fandom transfer to this.
Speaker 4: Or no it was I didn't. I didn't even know
it was those people. I think I have been reminded
several times, but it was not like a thing I
remembered about the game. Sure, but the way it is
is it's basically like little playable music videos that happened
through a story. So the main character Stacey Stacey Rockford,
she like talks the camera like she's Ferris Bueller. It's
very like cinematic. The cut scenes are very like fast paced.
Speaker 2: In a way. That like.
Speaker 4: There there's a whole thing about when you look at
stories and like cinematography in video games. A lot of
the times when we say like a game has a
good story, it is within the like bubble of like
good story for a video game, And this one was
very much right out the gate. It was like I
could tell they're being very intentional about like where in
the frame this character was, and like when they were
saying their lines correctly, and when you go through these things,
the actual interactivity you're not doing all that much, but
it is like so well thought out that I'm never
like bored because the scenery is changing and I'm always
being engaged by like the story and stuff or whatever.
So the very opening is just you skateboarding down a hill.
It has like pretty simple skateboarding mechanics, but you're going
along to a song has like claps in it, and
just when the claps come, all the characters on screen
clap their hands and sink as if they can all
hear the music. So it's kind of like it very
much like breaks the fourth wall a lot. And then
when you're in between songs like that, you get a
bunch of like stock footage from like I like caught
the developer as I was leaving. I was in like
an overflow session where I got to play the game,
but the devil wasn't sitting next to me, and he
was like, Yeah, I got all this stock footage for
really cheap from the like Australian Broadcast Network or something.
So it's like old b roll that they used for
news programs and stuff. But it really like adds a
lot of texture to it of being like, I don't know,
when she's talking about older events and like the beginnings
of songwriting and recording, you're like, oh, this is footage
of people you know, mixing audio in the seventies or whatever.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it really kind of reinforces it.
Speaker 3: This game isn't set in Australia, though, is it.
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 4: No, at least if it is, it's weird because none
of the characters have Australian accents.
Speaker 6: Okay, that's what the studio is based though.
Speaker 4: Yeah, they all kind of talk like this, I'm gonna
be the great music supervisor in the world.
Speaker 2: That's my plan.
Speaker 4: I know it's not New York because she's gonna go
to New York and that's gonna be a big feel
it's kind of valley.
Speaker 6: Girl, yeah, ly adjacent.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: The the it almost makes me think it's like a
like a Washington or an Oregon.
Speaker 6: I don't know, it sounds very it sounds very campy.
Speaker 3: Specific Northwest character.
Speaker 4: It's very much like, yeah, it knows exactly the genre
it's trying to like fit into and like kind of
make fun of but also kind of engage with earnestly.
I think that's a lot of the reason it works
so well is it's so earnest in uh, the.
Speaker 2: Stuff that it does.
Speaker 4: And how like, even when it's funny moments, it's not
even portrayed as like you as the audience member, are
perceiving it as funny, but no one in the thing
is like, this is funny.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 4: There's a sequence where she's like reminiscing on I don't
know if it's her first kiss or just like a
memorable kiss she has, but it's like a flashback and
there's like a song playing and it's like romantic and
like the sun is setting and their lips are getting
closer together, and then it cuts to a mini game
where it's just like an X ray of their mouths,
so you just see like their jaws and teeth and
then their tongues and you control each tongue with one
of the analog sticks.
Speaker 2: And I was like, oh my god.
Speaker 4: And I was like, I don't know if there's like
an objective, And after like thirty seconds, you can just
press a to say that's enough.
Speaker 3: And I was like, yeah, don't. I don't want to
just play. That was enough for me.
Speaker 4: But I like how how quickly they're like, look how
serious this is. And it's like, also, they're weird teenagers
that don't know what to do with their tongues, and
we're gonna make fun of that. And my favorite of
the sequences is like the last one you do is
they're thinking back on a time they were at like
a party and everyone's like drinking. They're in high school,
and then one of their friends is like super drunk,
right when the cops show up and they're like, oh no,
we got to get out here. So they throw her
in a shopping cart and then ride the shopping cart
down the hill. And it starts off as just like
a quick It's probably using like the same mechanics as
like the skateboard section.
Speaker 2: It's just like a quick.
Speaker 4: Kind of you're just dodging obstacles as you go down
the hill to get away from this one cop car,
and then like more and more cop cars start spawning
in and then like one like skids across the whole road,
and it gets into this like it pretends to be
super intense, and then you see you're playing through the
news feed of a chopper that's following you as you're
going on the highway in a shopping cart at full
car speed, and then it ends with you crashing into
the water.
Speaker 2: And then one of the guys is.
Speaker 4: Like, at least that's how I remember it, and it's like, oh,
then that actually happened. I was like, this is kind
of crazy that this happened in narrator. Yeah, so I
appreciate that. It's I think the unreliable narrator is a
good good phrase because it's very much like it's a
high school story told by what it felt like it
was when you're in high school. That's what I like
a lot about telling of age stories, whether it's like
this or like life is strange, or even like Spider Man,
where it's like this is a kid and they're being
very overwhelmed by all these parts of your life and
even when you are that age and like the overwhelming
things are like learning how to drive and getting your
homework done and like social pressure or whatever. It feels
like you know, you're running from a cops and like
a crazy high speed chase, or you know you have
superpowers all of a sudden. So I feel like it
really captured the vibe very well. And for it to
be like a narrative game that had such a good demo,
I was like, that's particularly impressive because I just I
feel like it would be really hard to explain a
lot of my favorite like narrative driven in adventure games
in like a thirty minute sit down time slot. So
favorite game I saw definitely gonna be playing that when
it comes out.
Speaker 6: Show Awesome.
Speaker 1: Well, we are going to take a quick break and
then we're gonna when we come back, we will be
back at the hotel talking with Rogers base I'm going
to be sitting out Roger's taking my spot. But we
had a really great conversation about the switch too. You
can see Marcus's first ree actions to holding the console.
It's a good time. And if we don't talk to
you at the other side of this thanks for listening,
and we'll see you next week.
Speaker 3: Hello everybody, welcome back to the Game Informer show. I
am Marcus Stewart still but I am not alone, and
neither is Charles Hart, who was also still here, believe it.
Speaker 2: Or not, and I'm never leaving, no.
Speaker 3: But to talk all things switched to. That thing came
out this week, believe it or not. Of all the
other things happening during SGF, we have a switch to
expert none other than Roger from Rogers Base.
Speaker 5: Hello, sir, Hello, thank you for having me. This is awesome,
good to see you again.
Speaker 8: I was gonna say it's been kind of weird because
like within the last two weeks, going from Orlando, seeing you,
going Epic Universe, Yeah, going to gumb Breaker right, which.
Speaker 5: We can talk about, Yeah you want to the Donkey
Kong Land.
Speaker 8: Like hen out of ten, But going from Epic Universe
to then Como Breaker to like I just told you
guys officiating a wedding last night to hear them off
to Mexico. So it's been a crazy two weeks for
me amidst the switch to lunch. But I got a
lot to talk about. So whatever you guys want to
talk about I'm here for.
Speaker 3: Yes, we have a switch to here right next to us.
I feel like a QBC host just holding.
Speaker 2: Up our own our own then.
Speaker 3: Alex, I want you to put like a lower third
with like the price everything is also the first time
I've held a switch to. Mine still has not coming
in the mail as as we're recording here.
Speaker 2: You gotta you gotta do the magnets.
Speaker 3: Right, do it?
Speaker 8: Okay, so click the little buttons in the back. Okay,
pull them down and then pull the thing off.
Speaker 3: Okay. I was like, what am I breaking? Alex has
switch to? Like if I just break out camera.
Speaker 2: That'd be a really funny prank.
Speaker 4: We got like a fake exploding exactly.
Speaker 3: How do you put that on?
Speaker 5: Do you just snap it back? Yeah? Magnets right there?
Wait it feels the amazement.
Speaker 3: Oh wait, we gotta do the blue one too? Yeah yeah, yeah, wait, Okay,
there we go. This is good podcasting right here. For
audio listeners. If you can hear the snaps switch to,
I have. I have removed both joy cons from switch
to and put them on successfully. Great job, you did it,
big thing. So but yeah, you have played more switch to,
I think than any of us up to this point. Yes,
what are your impressions of the console so far? What
do you think of Mario Card? Where are you at
right now? I mean where do I start?
Speaker 8: I think, first and foremost, my initial impression when I
went to those switch to experiences a couple of months ago,
was like, oh, this is just like a nicer Switch.
I'm somebody who is like notoriously a Nintendo fanboy, right,
so I kind of knew right.
Speaker 5: From the get go.
Speaker 8: I'm like, I'm gonna like this thing, regardless it's a
new donkey klong, of course I'm going to play this thing.
But as I've actually gotten to experience it over the
course of this week, like, man, I'm digging it. I
really am, And as somebody who like primarily plays in
handheld mode, I was just talking about the fact that,
like I travel a bunch, I feel like I have
been sort of like honed in on my Steam Deck
and my Switch for like a really long time. And
obviously we've gotten to a point now where like so
many games just like do not run on the switch,
and when you have the Steam Deck right there, they're like, well,
this is great, I've got a flight coming up. I'll
play my metaphor, it's going to be awesome play and
then you get on that flight and it lasts like
an hour and a half and you go, oh okay,
and then you know, you plug your steam Deck in
the thing it doesn't even charge.
Speaker 2: I got a flat in Japan ten more times a
year to beat metaphor.
Speaker 8: Yes, right, And so the first thing I noticed right away,
because I do play in handheld mode, is like the
battery life is longer than I was expecting it to be.
So I've almost primarily been playing Mario Kart Tour in
handheld mode, like either while traveling or like even just
while sitting at home, and it's lasted usually like they
don't have it all cranked, like around like two and
a half to three hours, which is like pretty good
considering that's like double what I was.
Speaker 5: Used to on my steam Deck.
Speaker 8: Sure, and I just feel like everything kind of surprised
me actually holding it in person, like having it myself
more than it did at the Switch to Experiences. I
feel like the system itself, like you just held it,
feels a lot more premium than I.
Speaker 3: Was expecting, feel like sturdier, yeah, and like you got.
Speaker 2: The check out the kickstand too on the ball.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's nice, whole big thing. Yeah that nice. No
longer the little flap that you'd have to order separately off.
Speaker 4: But like Nintendo, I remember trying to trying to play
Switch one on like a road trip in the back
seat with my brother and just that one tiny kickstand
falling over all the time.
Speaker 2: As people as.
Speaker 3: This, you can kind of put it on your list.
Speaker 5: Let's just switch.
Speaker 3: Maybe I'm a yu Oh fan and I'm like, oh,
it's like a little dual desk. You can go kind
of like, oh, like a little data pasta first switch
to owners. You should do that.
Speaker 8: I do not do that, but I think even like
the game card things, like where you put the game
cards into the old switch, remember it had that weird
little flat that you had to kind of do with
your like nail to lift the thing up. Now it's
like on the right side the USB. You can charge
from the top too, as well as from the bottom.
Speaker 5: So it's like a lot of small.
Speaker 8: Things that you're not really going to notice until you
actually like have the thing in your hands yourself and
you're doing your day to day stuff and you're like, oh, yeah,
this was this felt worth it the.
Speaker 4: Exact kind of thing you want from a second version
of a console is it's like when you have all
the people on.
Speaker 2: Presumably working to ten, but also just across.
Speaker 4: The world that have played it, and they're like, these
are all my tiny little pet peeves. It makes a
really big difference to fix like ten of them at once.
Speaker 8: And the joy cons obviously too, with the click versus
the slide. I mean that's another big one. But yeah,
everything so far has run great. I think like one
of the first things I did, I was lucky enough
Nintendo sent me one a day early, which like I
did not expect.
Speaker 5: And so they were just like, here's a ups order
and I'm like, I'm scrambling. I'm like, sh Jeff, and
I got this wedding. I'm like, what am I gonna do?
So I just like went live.
Speaker 8: I streamed it wet live, downloaded all the games that
had the free like switch one to switch to upgrades,
and just tried them all.
Speaker 5: Out because the servers weren't even.
Speaker 3: Up to like plan line, which one has impressed these
so far in terms of Pokemon is like.
Speaker 5: A different game.
Speaker 2: I was gonna ask, Yeah, it is.
Speaker 8: It is like shocking how much different it is, Like
I am not somebody that's a big like frames per
second kind of guy, Like I can't really tell the difference.
Speaker 5: This one was like substantial difference. You tell right away.
Speaker 8: There's more Pokemon that are populated in the areas as well,
so like if you're a Shiny Hunter, that's like a
big thing. Is like you have to go through and
do the little like auto battle things to get your
little Pokemon. It happened one of my friends v is
like a huge Shiny Hunter, and she ended up getting
like three of the ones she wanted right.
Speaker 5: Away on the two version.
Speaker 3: Yea, I wonder what that's going to do for sales
of that game, specifically because I think it's so fine
because it's Pokemon, right, but hearing that it's basically a
new game, Like how many people were turned off from
like that really bad launch of Scarlet and Violet.
Speaker 8: No, surprisingly, not a lot to go. I think it's
like the second or third best selling Pokemon of all time.
Speaker 3: But I'm wondering, like all that like raised more of
the people I did hold off and I see now, like, hey,
this is what you wanted it launch more or less,
Like it's like I'm more interested in diving into it now.
But it's on a better console than I would have
been on Switch one, so I'm really curious to see
how like it's sales spike at all. Because of that,
I'm like, this is the good version everyone I did it.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I do feel like it's more of a litmus
test for what's happening coming up with that new Legends game.
Speaker 5: It's like Legends ZA.
Speaker 8: I feel like if the switch To edition plays even
at all like this Scarlet and viol edition, I do
think people are going to be pretty happy. The other
one that like I noticed right away and it doesn't
going to have one that's like an established upgrade is
Smash Brothers because there's currently a weird glitch where like,
if you play with me Fighters online, it like messes
up your game, So don't do that.
Speaker 5: But and they said they're going to patch it immediately.
Speaker 2: How does it, Oh, you're saying on switch to.
Speaker 5: Switch to if you play with like the me Fighters online,
I don't know this.
Speaker 8: Like, I think it's because of the way the mes
are integrated into the system this time versus like the
old one, where now I think the mes are genderless
and so there's like this weird thing where it's like
registering the me.
Speaker 5: Thing incorrectly or something. I'm not sure.
Speaker 8: But the one big thing notoriously with Smash Ultimate is
like when you load up the costumes. You know it
would takes some times like forever for the P ANDG
to load.
Speaker 5: It's instant now, so you book the thing up, you load.
Speaker 8: And like the stress test that we did on stream
was eight player ice climbers, have all the ice climbers exclusively,
um Fountain of Dreams with like the reflections and everything. Yeah,
ran perfectly sixty frames right all the way through, And
so I'm like, that is kind of what I wanted
from the system, and so little by little kind of
discovering that stuff with like those free upgrades has been
just fantastick.
Speaker 3: Yeah right, and of course, oh no, go ahead.
Speaker 2: I would say another one.
Speaker 4: I haven't gotten to use it yet, but it was
one I don't feel like I've seen a lot of
people talking about Mario Odyssey gotten updates that you can use.
Speaker 2: Game share now, which is the.
Speaker 4: Thing that is like this just download play where like
you have one console and you have the other one,
you can share the game with them, right, so one
person going to have Mario Odyssey, other persons have to
have it, and then they can play as Cappy and
that's just like a really nice I don't know, I
just thought that was cute. I like the idea of
and I don't know how often I'll do it, but
I would love to see game share just going to
a bunch of older games that would bit will.
Speaker 8: I mean, I think there's already like twelve that have
been updated, all the Marios except Wonder, probably because they're
making switch to dish. I don't know, but like makes sense.
But all the Mario games except Wonder, Clubhouse Games, which
is like makes a lot of sense to have download play,
and even some stuff like game Builder Garage got mouse controls. Yes,
so you can like design your games with mouse controls,
which is kind of cool.
Speaker 3: So I do think more down the way, Yeah, Mario
Maker two would be great when mouth oh my god, yeah,
Mario Level Editor, Yeah.
Speaker 8: Yeah, So I do think that is probably going to
come at some point.
Speaker 5: And so seeing more of these kind of.
Speaker 8: Like erupt out of the ecosystem of like you know
what games are going to get switched to upgrades is
kind of going to be this big thing for a
nintended direct, So I'm assuming moving forward of like, these
are the five games we're going to update for free,
and here are the ones that are switched to editions
that you paid ten dollars more for us.
Speaker 3: So yeah, awesome. Well, the main event of the switch
to launches, of course, Mario Kart World. Yes, you have
been playing a lot of Mario Kart World t World.
What do you think of it? We're you stacking it
so far? Like, are you having fun with this game?
Speaker 5: First off, I'm having way more fun than I was expecting.
Speaker 3: Really, how does you feel going in?
Speaker 8: So when I went to the switch to experience my
big thing coming out of it, people can go back
and like watch my preview and again I am like
notorious Nintendo fanboy.
Speaker 5: I was like, I don't think Mario Kart's really worth
the money.
Speaker 8: I was like, Jerome seems kind of cool, like but
it seems kind of bare bones. I'm like, the Knockout
Tour mode is great, but like, I don't necessarily think
this is going to be like this big game changer.
The game chat stuff is so goofy with like the
camera and everything. I'm like, I don't think I'm ever
going to use this, and now overall I was just
like I don't see myself like wanting this, Like I
did what you were talking about, right, It's like I'm
getting this for Donkey Kong.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 8: And now I'm like twenty hours in and I'm like, oh,
this is the best Mario Kart they've ever made.
Speaker 3: Yes, I think like that was like, yeah to me
felt like the impossible bar FORDO.
Speaker 5: The hit And I think I think it's because of
also game because perfect, Yeah, so you can play where
are you doing it?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm to ignore you.
Speaker 8: I feel like free erum mode. I still stand by
what I said at those experiences. I do think it's
very bare bones. Yeah, there's like the peace switch things,
and there's other things you can unlock, but for the
most part, you could unlock the majority of.
Speaker 5: Stuff just by playing Grand Prix.
Speaker 8: Which already was like a pretty huge, like good surprise
to me because I'm like constantly unlocking characters or costumes.
Speaker 5: The camick abilities that happen where if.
Speaker 8: You're in a race and then like someone gets the
chemic item and you're in front, it transforms you into
a random NPC from like Mario history, so you'll turn
into like the Cataquacs from Mario Sunshine.
Speaker 5: I mean, like deep Lords.
Speaker 3: I was gonna you probably haven't seen all of them.
It's like, I wonder how deep that well goes of,
Like I have not seen this particular sprite since you
know Mario two or you know, even might be like
Mario Land. I don't know if you the handheld stuff.
Speaker 8: That's the cool thing about this, which I think as
a Nintendo fan, is what's making me go like, oh
my god, I love this, is that it's canonizing so
many like side Mario games into like the overall lore
of Mario to make it feel like work canon now.
So Wart didn't show up yet to my knowledge, I
have not seen Wart. Warrial Ware is totally part of this.
There's like orchestrated remixes of Warriorware music that plays in
free room. You've got like Yoshi's Story, Donkey Kong Country,
Luigi's Mansion, just a lot of stuff. And the weird
thing is those songs a lot of the time are
only in freerom mode, so like when you're exploring the world,
they'll just randomly start playing. And that's honestly my big
ripe right now. I'm like there's no jukebox mode.
Speaker 3: That is very weird, Like you're driving for like presumably hours. Yeah,
I'm like the open rod, like I'm just cruising around.
You have all this music, like you would think just
like two and two like be cool if you had
a car radio. So just like I'm sure going to
I just want to do like my road trip Mario fantasy.
I'm just like maybe this is what Mario does when
he's not like rescuing the Rescue King the Mushroom Kingdom
every other week. But you know, like some people like
to drive to nowhere as like a meditative experience. Like
in my head, kin, I would like to any Mario
does that too, because that's the only reason why he
keeps a cart, you know, and then he happens the
race when it calls for it.
Speaker 8: That is It's funny you bring that up because I
think one of the other cool things about this is
like you do kind of zen out a little bit
when you are in free Rome and you run into
like those little bags because the little the fast food
bags basically unlock costumes.
Speaker 5: So what you guys saw on that.
Speaker 8: Trailer where it's like you drive through the little Yoshi
stop or whatever. Every area essentially has like a Yoshi's
like a little fast food area, and when you drive
through there with your characters again, you could see the
amount of costumes you could of lock.
Speaker 5: It's ridiculous, different.
Speaker 3: Carts and stuff. This is really turning into a QVC Comah.
Speaker 5: I mean, I'm sure that was very happy with you.
This is right.
Speaker 3: We don't want your game on this. Take it down.
Speaker 8: But the yeah, it's like the amount of costumes that
you can unlock, like you're constantly just getting stuff for
all the different characters. There's like, like I said, deep
lore cuts. There's also just like weird stuff. There's like
a wall Ouigi costume then locks that turns them into a.
Speaker 3: Vampire, as like, what's the weirdest thing you've seen?
Speaker 8: My favorite is also kind of the weirdest, which is
the Pirate Warrio and Pirate King Boo. So there's a
level that's based like I think it's Warrior Shipyard and
it's like a ghost ship cool environment that you can
drive through and when you get the fast food in
that area, as King Boo a Warrio, they turn into
Pirate King versions of themselves and Warrio straights up straight
up like looks like gold Roger from One Piece, and
Boo has like a hook for a hand, and it's
just like the costumes are really detailed and just like
amazing seeing the love and dedication that they put into
like all of the other stuff in the game, I
think is something that really sold it on me, because
again I wasn't like sold immediately at the switch TOOS,
I did like Knockout Tour, which is.
Speaker 3: I was going to ask you what you thought about
KNOS So it sounds cool. Do you like F zero
ninety nine? Yes?
Speaker 5: Okay, you will love Knockout to her?
Speaker 3: Okay?
Speaker 8: So F zero ninety nine is essentially that as a
mode where you you choose like five courses or six
one of the two I remember, but you choose like five.
You all into an erase. There's twenty four of you
and it's just one conticulous, continuous, like long rally that
you're going through basically, and every time you go through
one of these arches, it tells you a ranking, and
if you're underneath that ranking, then obviously you get eliminated.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 8: That gets so hectic, and we were streaming it, it's
like insane.
Speaker 3: It sounds like the Mario car is already like you're
screaming at each other and punching each other on the
shoulder every two seconds. Syce you're getting screwed over some way.
That sounds like that's double just like we're like, oh,
I was almost there, like you already you already feel
us think of the feet when you are about to
win and somebody laps you at the last second, but
knowing that you are now like done from a mode
like just done, done done. Yeah, like that will probably ruin.
Speaker 2: More relationship yesh.
Speaker 3: Yeah, maybe murderers might be in the name of knockout Schoever,
it's been crazy because I feel like that actually goes
into the other thing that I was like not sold
out at all the system during those events that now
I've played, and I'm like.
Speaker 5: This is so dumb. I love it, which is game chat.
Speaker 4: So when you came, just gonna ask yeah, or the
camera if you have a cat so I have.
Speaker 5: I got one of the cameras.
Speaker 8: They sent one of those over, and the cameras got
obviously the crunchy like automatic green screen or whatever in it.
Speaker 5: But I was streaming just for.
Speaker 8: Fun, like on launch day with twelve of my buddies,
all different streamers, and we're like, let's just test game
chat like like full like full room of twelve online,
all talking over each other, four cameras everything, see what
this is Like, It is the most fun I've had
on stream all year, okay, and it's like we're screaming.
Speaker 5: At each other.
Speaker 8: You're seeing everybody's faces, especially because like there's three options
for game chat. There's like a little face window that
basically like just picks up your face. There's a window
that's essentially your webcam window that has your whole background,
and then there's one that's like a filtered out version
that then has your screen in the background.
Speaker 5: And so all of us were using it in different
ways and like yelling at each other.
Speaker 8: We're all we're on the racetrack, and at first, like
it was just fun to see people's faces as you're
like racing and just have it native to the system.
Speaker 5: But then like we literally felt.
Speaker 8: Like we were in a switch to commercial because after
one of these knockout tour things, you you go into
free roam mode. Essentially when you're in a room, you
can like drive around and do a bunch of stuff
and my buddy Coast was playing and he's like, oh,
by the way, you guys, like, if you want the
costume that I'm wearing, just drive down to this area
by Peach's garden and we're like, where are you talking about.
He's liked, oh, look at my screen. So we like
expand the screen. We're doing this on stream, and then
we go on to this thing we drive down and we're.
Speaker 5: Like, oh my god. We're literally like we're that girl.
Speaker 8: On the roof for the Switch commercial, Like this is us.
We're doing what they want is to do.
Speaker 3: But shout out to Girling sw.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, shout out the growing roof. We're having her
on the next segment.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I is if I got a surprise for you.
Speaker 8: But it just it's been a blast playing through it
in a way that I really was not expecting. And
I feel like I was almost worried that Mario Kart
wasn't going to hold me over until Donkey Kong. Yeah,
and now I'm like waiting for them to be like
I'm sure they're going to expand this with DLC.
Speaker 3: That's what I'm wondering, Like what the DLC looks like,
Like you can add more course like it. But will
they expand sort of the free rome, like literally add
more mash.
Speaker 2: Sure, I feel I can.
Speaker 4: You can never see them like adding an island, the
new island that has a bunch of new stuff.
Speaker 3: If you just add a bridge. I think that's yeah.
Speaker 8: Because the way that the world is set up, I
don't really know like how they would make DLC courses
in the middle of what's already built, because so much
of it is tied to like secrets and rails that
lead other things. Very purpose yeah, you know, but islands,
I do think makes sense. And the one thing I
noticed right away, which I don't think Nintendo wanted us
to notice this, but like I noticed right away is
that all of these characters have so many alternate costumes
except for two, and that's Donkey Kong and Pauline.
Speaker 5: Donkey Kong and Pauline are the.
Speaker 8: Only two that only have one. There's a certain game
coming out next month, a new Donkey Kong, and I'm like,
I wonder if they're going to do like a free
DLC upgrade thing for Mario Kart where it's like, by
the way, here's the other six Donkey Kong outfits and
they're all tied to things with Bonanza, like here's Pauline stuff.
I do feel like that is how they're going to
go about doing this. So if they do upcoming islands,
like I can imagine when they announced like a Luigi's
Mansion game, eventually it's like here's the Ghost Island, you
get Professor Egad and like all the weird boo item
NPC's or whatever. We're like, here's the Yoshi Story and
you get Puuci as a racer. Like, I do feel
like that's how they're going to expand you know, because
early rumors with this game were like, oh, maybe this
is going to be like their take on Smash Cart,
right yeah, just everybody yet, right yeah, And now that
I'm playing it, and now that I'm seeing the love
that's been put into like the stuff that's Mario Cannon
now like what they consider there and it's all tied
to stuff that like hasn't been announced for switch To yet,
I do think that is the direction they're going to go.
And it's like a Warrior Ware island, the Yoshi Story island,
a Luigi's Mansion island, a Donkey Kong island, And.
Speaker 2: I would say it's interesting.
Speaker 4: In Mark or eight, they started going kind of wide
with the franchise stuff where they're like, we're gonna pull
you can be Animal Crossing, you can be.
Speaker 2: Link or Zelda herb Zells on it.
Speaker 3: But you know what I mean.
Speaker 4: And now they're going deep, they're like, let's actually be
you can be the little Crab enemy. And I think
it's like a really interesting I think it's a it's
almost like in a good way, like a rejection of
the smash card of like, you know what, this is
Mario Kart, and it's it's weird that you could play
as ping gold Peach and not nab it.
Speaker 2: So let's just like really, let's just like really drive
it in.
Speaker 3: It's like they're daring, like you don't think we'll make money,
mool ra, Oh yeah, we'll make money. We'll make it
beautid dolphin with the goggles from Mario World Dolphins. That
does makes sense, but you can do it.
Speaker 2: The fact that they're like you can be Cow, and
it was.
Speaker 3: Like, oh my god, this is Cow.
Speaker 5: I want charge And I think he's already that. I'm
pretty sure.
Speaker 3: I'm trying to think who else I want? Uh, there's
probably I mean I would like Mario Galaxy representation. So
there's one of.
Speaker 8: The stages is like amazing, which is the new Rosellina course.
There's a Rosalina Observatory like Ice Palace course.
Speaker 2: They do song it well.
Speaker 5: There is a lot of Mario Galaxy music. There's that's there.
There's like the space Junk Galaxy. It's like.
Speaker 2: That's there.
Speaker 8: And when you're driving up into the Rosalina Castle, like
in the observatory part, there's this giant like Sixtine chapel
thing up there with like the galaxies and all the
little lumas prescot and it's just like it's when you
go to it for the first time and you see
it and there's all the little particle effects, it's like
your jaw does kind of drop.
Speaker 5: The only thing is lumas aren't racers, which is weird.
Speaker 3: There's no but I feel like it's a way too big,
like side characters not yeah, but otherwise there's.
Speaker 5: A ton of Mario Galaxy stuff in this, like more
than I was expecting.
Speaker 8: I feel like if you have a favorite Mario game,
almost definitely there is something in this for you. Like
even Mario Land fans like the weird stuff from the
from the Game Boy Mario games, like the Moa statue
enemies and things like that. They make that now, like
which makes sense part of Daisy's kingdom. So like when
you go to the bizarre type area that's in the desert,
like that's where Daisy comes from. So now you're like
seeing the giant Moway statue heads and you're seeing all
this weird stuff and Daisy's in like her cool little
like Princess Jasmine out there and you're like this is.
Speaker 5: Bad as I love this.
Speaker 3: More of this, Please you make the alien saucer just
make that a cart, yes?
Speaker 5: Or make him a character yea?
Speaker 3: Or yeah even better or just yeah, like do that
make I'm trying to think of the weird things to do.
Make flood of racer flood just like the jet pack
in the car, and it's like flood could also be
a cart, it could be a race. I'm shocked there.
Speaker 8: Is not a cart that you unlock with eyeballs on
it that is cappy as the car.
Speaker 2: That's another one where it's like, yeah it is.
Speaker 4: It is crazy how much of a computer theoris it
turns you into of like yeah, maybe Mario Oannessy two's
coming on next year.
Speaker 3: That's plus again. I say, it's what affection have gotten
so stupid with the roster of like like, okay, there's
no wrong answer apparently about what could be in an
a seat of a racer. It can literally just be
like one of those happy clouds in the sky.
Speaker 5: Maybe that could be a white literally snowman.
Speaker 8: I'm like, I don't even remember snowman in any Mario
game prior to this, and they were like, no, it's
the snowman from the ice area and the old Mario carts.
I'm like, that's a character. I thought that was like
stage decoration.
Speaker 3: What do you mean? So put the little desert dudes
a little stack.
Speaker 5: They have so one of the ones.
Speaker 8: They have one of the weirdest ones I've n locked
were in three D world. You know, like those giant
cranes with the long necks that like slam down on
the stage. Those are racers.
Speaker 3: Wait what this like giant thing that's just like slamming down.
Put that realistic t Rex just oh my god, shrink
that model down and put it in a car.
Speaker 5: That's crazy.
Speaker 8: You say that there is literally a Dino Dino jungle
area in this one. That like they could have totally
done that as the NPC.
Speaker 5: Character you unlocked there. I don't know why they didn't
do that.
Speaker 4: I love that you can say the phrase Dindyno jungle
and it's like, we know exactly.
Speaker 2: I did want to ask kind of going back.
Speaker 4: To hardware, but also this it's like four K now
if it's dost Yeah, Mark, I don't know if you've
seen the new doc in person at all.
Speaker 3: Off camera, Mo, is it plugged in?
Speaker 5: Alex, No, it's not plugged in. Perfect here we got
look at this first time touching this too.
Speaker 2: I don't think I realized the back.
Speaker 3: Was so round, right, It's fine, it's it's resting. This
is a really an endorsement for the Kicks exactly. It
could not be more snugged. Yes, yes, yeah, this thing
is uh. I mean to build quality is definitely better.
Speaker 8: That's kind of the main takeaway I took from everything
switched to like having in my hand is like, oh,
this feels premium, Like I think that's that's the one
big thing is I feel like the prices for the games,
I think, for the most part were what kind of
surprised people. I think pricing wise, like four fifties kind
of around, like it's a little more expense that what
people were expecting.
Speaker 3: Sure, I think kind of tracks for what.
Speaker 8: It is, and it really does feel like a four
to fifty system, Like it feels like you're getting your
money's worth, which is cool.
Speaker 4: Yeah, the my I think my one gripe and maybe
I was doing it wrong. But the back panel it
does the same.
Speaker 2: With the O lead. Yeah, it pops off completely and.
Speaker 5: The way it's like the hinges and as good.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's might scream at you, but it's supposed to
come off right the when you pull it off, you.
Speaker 3: I'll do it.
Speaker 5: Here we go, Yeah, all right, we're when you just
pop it off. See how it's got this like a
little hinge that comes off. It doesn't like fully connect.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, slide in there. The olead is similar.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and it bothers me because a lot of times
you're gonna have your the back of the dock against
the wall next to a TV, so you're going to
be popping it off and then it's going to kind
of fall off with be like between that and the wall.
Speaker 2: That's like that's the one part that has felt Yeah.
Speaker 5: I mean it pops back on easy.
Speaker 2: It does. Yeah, but it's like, ah, other than that,
I like how it looks.
Speaker 5: Like I want to look at that. I think looks good.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it does look pretty slick.
Speaker 8: I will say I'm in complete agreement though, especially like
on the streamer side, is because like when you're constantly
taking things in and taking this out in HDMI, it's like,
I just keep it off. Now, I'm like, I make
sure to dust back there so nothing gets in it.
But I'm like, I just keep the thing off because
I know realistically like I'm going to be taking things.
Speaker 5: In and out.
Speaker 8: It's got the Ethernet port back there and everything, and
it's like, I don't want to be the person that
gets on Street Fighter on switch to and then they're
like he's.
Speaker 5: On Wi Fi, Like, get him off here, his Wi
Fi Warrior out of my thing? Yeah.
Speaker 3: Did they include the risks straps still?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 8: So the weird thing is the risk traps are they
double as like a mouse mode addition thing?
Speaker 5: Oh so see they're like these little raised We've.
Speaker 3: Got more accessories coming on camera.
Speaker 5: I actually really like we'll do that.
Speaker 2: We'll do these first. You're talking about him, you can
hand me the doc if you want. Yeah, here we go.
Speaker 5: We'll take this out, DOCU.
Speaker 3: So we got here we go. The wrist straps. There
you go to make sure that you don't enjoy throw
these out the window or through your TV.
Speaker 5: That's right, other ways the other way?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, oh yeah, you got to. You gotta use
it as a mouse too. You haven't done that?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Can you play Mario Karp in mouse mode?
Speaker 5: I actually have never tested it.
Speaker 3: I heard anyone really talk about that.
Speaker 2: You would need to point at but you can, like me.
Speaker 3: Just like to steer or I guess. I don't know.
I don't know why you would want to do it,
but it just like it just seems like, I guess
if you could do.
Speaker 2: It, they should have a drag x drive mode thing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it seems like that would be like the humble Brag.
If someone that's really good at Mario Karp but only
in mouse mode and it just kick everyone's as that's
going to be someone like that, They like, I'm going
to dedicate myself to getting good at Mario Kart in
mouse move.
Speaker 8: I do wonder because we were talking about like the
future of Mario Kart right like and things that they
might add in terms of like DLC roadmap. Hey, DLC,
I do think is like islands and characters, but I
do think there will be free delC.
Speaker 5: Like I think one of the big things.
Speaker 8: When I was going through it is like I just
unlocked Mirror Mode, which, like a lot of people are like,
is Mira mode even in this anymore? Because you go
through all the cups, you get all the golds, and
you still don't unlock it, and you're like, well, and
you'ven locked all the characters.
Speaker 5: You're like, this is weird. How do you unlock it?
Speaker 8: There's these hidden medallions that are on free Roam mode,
and when you liked eight of them, it's just weird
random number and you do the special cup again. You
then unlock Mirror mode. But the weird thing is it
doesn't unlock Merror mode in free rom. The way to
unlock mer mode in free Room, which I literally just
found out thirty minutes before coming here, is that and
I found this out on stream, is that there's Peaches
Castle on the actual map, like the Nintendo sixty four
Peaches Castle. When you are driving off one of the
areas onto the roof of Peaches Castle, you know, like
in the old game where Yoshi was standing and you
drive into the stained glass window like the peachdain glass window.
Speaker 5: It mirror modes all a free roam mode.
Speaker 8: And now the entirement is easy, which is so and
it's like, I don't know how people discovered this. Yeah,
like it's not available anywhere obviously none of us got
review codes other than like a day before, so people
are like trying to figure out like how to do it,
and that I guess how you do it is you
unlock it by driving through the stained glass in free
room on the top of Peaches Castle. And I don't
know if you have to like already unlock merror mode
as a grand Prix before you do it. But it's
just weird stuff like that that's making me go like, oh,
they really did like put the love and the kind
of like.
Speaker 5: You know that childhood. Oh this you could do this
thing on the you know, like this area and then
try to unlock this thing.
Speaker 2: So love.
Speaker 4: I love that because it encourages you to try to
do weird stuff like that in the future of like
what if I can get in this one?
Speaker 2: No, I can go under here, and.
Speaker 3: Yeah I love that. Yeah, that's what I'm trying to
see what was that.
Speaker 5: Oh oh, this is the Uh you can click one
of these onto there.
Speaker 8: I don't think you can strap yeah, but you can
definitely do this one if you want to click it
in there.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, let's try the blue was.
Speaker 5: Going to say because the other one.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't know if anyone talked about it. I
love the color. I liked it. These are accents now,
like I'm the like bad person that did it, like
the red blue joy cons like I bought the gray
version of it was like it's a little too much
coor it was a little too much like a toy.
I think this is perfect. It's got like an old
school like twenty eleven, back when like blue and orange
was the craze.
Speaker 2: So this is a you slide it in just like
the other one.
Speaker 5: Yeah, there you go and just click it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, hold on, let me take it back out. They
want to really make sure. They might probably go for
audio listeners.
Speaker 5: Just so clicking that now while it's there, try pulling
it out without doing this.
Speaker 3: Okay, Oh wow, you can't.
Speaker 5: It's sturdy in there.
Speaker 8: I mean literally, people are doing stress tests and doing videos.
It's like that thing is sturdy. That thing is like
kid proof, where with the magnets they actually are strong
and they do click in and you really do have
to click.
Speaker 3: Infomercial from Mighty Putty.
Speaker 2: Ben and Jennet from Imax that did at the switch
to them right in front of the tent of.
Speaker 5: People and they eventually got it off, but it was
like one.
Speaker 3: Person holding the other. Wait, are they using like their
demo units. Yeah, the ones when they like technically break.
Speaker 4: That member was right there like sweating, like trust, trust
the product, product.
Speaker 5: And it was that it was totally fine. It clicks out.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Yeah, that's wild. I hearing when it was like
just rumored that it was just magnets. It was like
that sounds cool, but like I don't know enough about
like industrial magnets, Like is that like a commercially viable
thing for like a essentially just a game also like
a toy more or less.
Speaker 2: That's cool.
Speaker 3: Wow, that's great.
Speaker 4: We did our little like day one switch impressions right
up on game before and we all just did a
little paragraph of like things we liked, and one of
mine was just like I just like magnets and you
don't really you don't really get magnets in your day
to day adult life all that much, and it is
just fun to just be like, I like it.
Speaker 3: I we take magnets for granted, we do.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're crazy, that's take away from this.
Speaker 2: Those those magnets are crazy magnets.
Speaker 5: How do they work? It said that was the old
bringing it back to two thousand and six or whatever,
the old.
Speaker 4: Memes, and we posted it and one of the it
was like CGI Editors Day one Impressions, and then had
a quote from me about childlike wondering magnets. Someone commented
like someone's supposed to spend four to fifty dollars just
for some magnets.
Speaker 2: And I really like that interpretation of it that I
was like, this is the little thing I like about
the poles, just just because you like so much time support.
Speaker 3: It was like, I didn't say that magneto over here
of just throwing money around just happen to be here exactly.
Speaker 8: Overall, I will say, because I know we got to
wrap it up kind of soon, I will just say
like I was very impressed in a way that I really.
Speaker 5: Was not expecting.
Speaker 8: I knew I was always going to like it, because
again I'm a Nintendo fan, Like of course, I'm gonna
like it. It's where I'm going to play my next
del to my next Mario whatever. But I feel like
I got my money's worth, like you know, even though
they sent me one, but I still bought one from Target.
So my girlfriend's got one too, and I like, don't
regret it at all. It's it's been really awesome.
Speaker 3: That's awesome, great man, Well, thank you so much for me.
Thanks for the tip super Mario Kart World. It's yeah awesome. Well,
thanks for having work at people.
Speaker 8: You can find me on YouTube at rogers base, YouTube, Twitch, Twitter, Instagram,
all that good stuff.
Speaker 5: Yep, I got brand unity everywhere.
Speaker 3: Awesome.
Speaker 5: Thanks for coming man, awesome, thanks for having me appreciate it.
Thank you.
Speaker 1: All right, Well that's the show for this week, everybody.
Thank you so much for listening. Don't forget the print
magazine and digital magazine is coming back and we are
going to announcing our first cover story here in the
next week or two. So please go over to gaminformer
dot com slash subscribe, please consider supporting us. They are
picking up a membership that gets you access to a
ton of web perks as well, like reduced ads, exclusive
content so on.
Speaker 3: And so forth.
Speaker 1: But it's a it's a great way to support Game Informer,
to keep the lights on and to get ten magazine
issues a year delivered to your door in the US.
Speaker 3: We do hear you.
Speaker 1: We we have brought up to our bosses that hey,
people really want this in other countries and other territories,
and so that is we are. We are hearing your feedback.
We are taking to them. No promises, but at the
end of the day, we really appreciate all the enthusiasm
behind behind the magazine and the enthusiasm behind bringing this showback.
It's been great to go and read folks comments on
Spotify and and just seeing the ratings and reviews on
YouTube that kind of thing. It's really good. Great, So
thank you all. We will see you next Thursday. Have
a good week, everybody,