Speaker 1: Hey, everybody. Welcome to the Game and Former Show, a
weekly podcast covering the video game industry. Join us each
and every week for a discussion at the latest gaming news, reviews,
and exclusive reveals with Game and Former staff and special
guests from around the industry. I am your host, Marcus Stewart.
I am joined by Kyle Hilliard.
Speaker 2: Hey, I'm here, fresh off a review, ready to talk
about it.
Speaker 1: Hell yeah. And also joining us freshly back from a
secret special trip, Eric Van Allen. Hello, super secret ultra
special trip, and I can't talk about it. Give me, like,
I think another two weeks or so and then we
can talk about it. But I'm here to talk about
other things instead. Yes, and join us. Back on the
Game and Former Show. A friend of gi an editor
over at Restart dot Run, Jesse Vittelli.
Speaker 3: Hello, man, Hey, thanks for having me. I'm back again.
You're stuck with me, Welcome back.
Speaker 2: We get to have It's not stuck, it's pleasant. I
haven't podcasts with you in a while.
Speaker 4: I don't. It's been a minute. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I thought I thought you're gonna go full like Eminem
slim shady for a second, like, I was like, Oh,
he's gonna start. Guess who's back again? I could my
brain was auto completing. It was actually a little bum
that you didn't do it.
Speaker 3: All right, I'm sorry to disappoint upfront, but at least
we got the disappointment out of the way. So for
the rest of the episode we can we could stay.
We plateaued, Oh yeah, well, you know not.
Speaker 1: What's not disappointing is us Game in Former, the Game
in Former show, Game and Former magazine. We're gonna be
talking about Sorrows today. Kyle Hilliard reviewed it for us.
We're also gonna dive into Diablo fors the latest expansion,
Lord of Hatred. We're gonna talk a bit about Yoshi
and the mysterious book, and we're going to touch a
little bit on Vampire Crawlers, the sort of dungeon crawler
seq well spiritual successor to Vampire Survivors.
Speaker 5: They're calling it a blobber is what they're saying. The
streets are saying blobber.
Speaker 2: Is it like the same universe as Vampire Survivors. I
know the narrative of Vampire Spiers is like whatever, but okay,
it's it is the world.
Speaker 5: Of Vampire Survivors, which is strange because the world of
Vampire Survivors is basically just castle.
Speaker 3: Vaded, like the jobber, Is that the same thing?
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, you get you get blobbed.
Speaker 5: I've always known the blob is that thing if you
went to a summer camp and they had the big
inflatable that was in the lake, and like one kid
sits on the end of it, and then somebody else
jumps off a tall platform and lands on the side
and kind of like.
Speaker 1: The other kids.
Speaker 5: Then yeah, yeah, depending on where you sit, it will
either just launch you a short distance or launch you
an incredibly far distance. As we learned of the blob,
the blob, oh dublob, that's the game?
Speaker 3: Is that the game?
Speaker 2: You're you're trying to color the world? Isn't that color
on everything?
Speaker 3: Just t HQ.
Speaker 1: Nordic owns the.
Speaker 3: Blob, right, they made a sequel and the Blob too.
Speaker 6: Was like fine, Kyle, I walked so concrete Genie could.
Speaker 2: Run right, They walked right by it. The blob was like,
it was fine. It was kind of like they were
going for a Katamari thing. That didn't quite hit with me,
but it was interesting. I'm trying something, Yeah, I was
gonna say it walks to that chicken. A color foot
tale could run a coloring game. God, we're going on
a weird tangent, right, This is what happens when you
bring up the blob in twenty twenty six. But before
we get into today's show, of course, as always, if
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Speaker 5: We were in the airport of Amsterdam. I can say
that much. I can't tell you where we went after
that or came back from, but I can tell you
that during transit in the airport of Amsterdam, we have
photographic evidence of Brian Jay holding up I believe it
was a double O seven first light cover story in Amsterdam.
Speaker 4: That was pretty cool.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean you could just tell them that you
guys got a tip that someone claimed that Game Informer
was in the Amsterdam airport, so you and Brian took
it upon yourself to fly out there.
Speaker 5: A Yeah, we flew to Amsterdam to confirm that there
was a Game Informer in the airport.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. We didn't want to rely on hearsay. We
wanted to get our eyes on it. Ourselves.
Speaker 5: So it's it's the drill budget and tweet but about
us spending money on flights for to verify the magazines
or in airports that the budget.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I can't think of a better time to take
frivolous flights. I've heard it. Yeah, it's great right now?
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: Well, Kyle Hilliard, we're gonna throw it to you because
you reviewed Sorrows, the newest game by how Smart, the
not sequel to Returnal, but is also very similar to
Returnal third person action shooter bullet Hell roguelike. I'm super
excited for this. I think a lot of us are
pretty excited for this. Tell us, what did you think
of this game? How does this stack up compared to Returnal?
Speaker 2: Uh? It is very good. It is a very good
video game. It was my most anticipated game of the year.
Like there's there's the GTAs of the World, which I
am very excited for. I want to play GTA, but
like I was, uh, I was. I think I was
on midmex We're talking about like if I had a
handful of games like right in front of me, if
I had GTA and Sorrows, Like what would I play first?
And you know, whatever else, I'm excited about it. And
I was like, Sorrows is the one I really want
to get my hands on and try, and like, yeah,
it is. It is for me. I did not disappoint
at all. Really, I think it plays wonderfully, like all
the new sort of mechanics that have been integrated, like
using the shield and how that integrates into like power
weapons and the sort of balancing act you have to
pull of, like you know, do I want to dodge
this or do I want to try to gather this
energy to like power this weapon. And the armor matrix,
which is like the permanent upgrades that you can unlock.
I think really go a long way in just making
the game just more consistently and frequently rewarding sorrows within
the Rogue On certainly did not invent permanent upgrades. That
is a thing that exists in other rogue les rogues
and rogue Likes and rogue legs, but it just I
feel like it's best, it's better implemented here. I don't
know better best. I don't even know if I need
to use those qualifiers, but I just think it's really
well implemented in that, like if you have a good run,
like you could unlock a lot of stuff, and you
can really kind of guide yourself to like how you're
sort of generally playing. Like I wasn't really pairing a
lot over the course of the game. It wasn't until
the end that I really sort of got my feet
under me and started pairing the red sort of attacks
a lot and really enjoying that. But like, you know,
because of that, for the first like sixty percent of
the game, I kind of, you know, didn't really need
to felt like I needed to spend a lot on those,
and I focus more on the elements that I wanted
more of. And it's nice that it lets you do that.
And it's like, like I said, if you have a
good run, you can unlock a lot of stuff all
at once, But if you have a bad run, you
can still unlock a few things. So it's just it's
a much less heartbreaking defeat. You know, like you you
feel good, you know, you feel better then. I'm comparing
it to Returnal, which I don't want to do too
much because even though like they are they are very
similar gameplay wise, they're they're pretty distinct. Well you know what,
actually I don't know that's that's not fair. They are.
They play very similarly, but Sorrows just has like so
many more like additional bells and whistles that just make
everything more manageable. I didn't find it as challenging as Returnal,
but I still found it very rewarding. I really, I
really like Sorrows a lot. I gave it a nine
two five for Game Informer, And it's the kind of
game that, like, you guys know how it is for us,
Like we will review a game and we hit credits
and we write the review, and maybe that's it. Maybe
we just don't go back to it, even if we
really liked it. Maybe if we claim we're going to
go back to it, it's like, yeah, we end up
not just because it's like that part of my life
is done. Sorrows is like I got credits, I wrote
the review, I recorded the v over for the review
eric which is now uploaded, and I'm like already, like
I've immediately like jumped back in and I'm like playing again,
and I'm going after sort of the the sort of
additional endings, and I want to I want to try
to get everything on, you know, all the upgrades and
things like that. It's just like it is one of
those games that has just infected me, you know, I'm
just thinking about it a lot. I don't want to
stop playing. It's really good. If you like Returnal, you will.
You will definitely like Sorrows if you were scared by
Returnal or the genre in general, I would still recommend
Sorrows because I think it is much friendlier to sort
of getting you on board and like getting into the
action and it feeling more fair and still feeling like
you're you have a sense of quality progress even if
you're not doing well. And it also a small thing
which was like a weirdly to me, like a big
complaint about Returnal. It was always odd to me that
this kind of bubbled to the surface. Is the thing
people didn't like about Returnal is like you can turn
off your system in the have a run and come
back to it. Like like I don't think there's some
asterisk with bosses. I think where it's like if you're
in the middle of a boss fight, it sends you
back right. But like if you if you're in the
middle of a run and you need to quit, like
you can, it'll put you back at the beginning of
the level. But it's like it's very sort of friendly
in that way. Jesse. You you've played and beaten it too, right,
like okay, because this is it, because I this is
my first time talking with anybody about it. Really we
have we we silo ourselves a game and former a
lot when it comes to reviews. Like even Matt Miller,
who I think is really enjoying it, was sort of
really if he was asking me questions or anything, it
was very cryptic and never about how do you feel
about it? And the same you know, like, so I'm
curious to hear another perspective like did you like it
as much as me?
Speaker 3: Or I will say I am. I think a little
bit lower on it than you are. That being said,
I do think a lot of what you're saying about
the gameplay stuff is like one hundred percent tro I
think this game plays so much better than Reternal. I
think I think a lot of it in terms of
like Doom Eternal in which like your shoulder rocket like
produces AMMO and then your melee produces shield and it
has that sort of like all the systems feed into
one another in really interesting ways, like absorbing with the
shield gives you the power weapon, and then you know
certain upgrades can change that, and then using your power
up and can give you this other thing. And I
think the ways in which that game flows when you're
in a flow state is impeccable. I think it is
some of the best bullet hell you can experience right now.
Speaker 1: Absolutely.
Speaker 3: I think where Sorrow starts to fall apart for me
a little bit is and it's really interesting because I
think we have opposite perspectives on this is. I think
it's almost like an overcorrection of Returnal, because I really
like how long and drawn out and challenging Returnal is.
Where Sorrow's feels like they've sort of over corrected a
little bit and made everything a little more bite size
and manageable, where every time you finish a level, you
can basically teleport and just start at the next chapter
of that level, and those runs are way shorter, like
like a Returnal run can take you an hour, two hours,
three hours, depending on how long you want to you
want to go for where everything you want to do
in Sorrows, I don't think anything took me longer than
forty minutes once I got once I got it right,
like if I started a level and beat a boss
probably about forty minutes, thirty minutes, but the game never
really pushed me to be like, Okay, you're actually going
to go for a long chunk. Now, You're actually we
actually need you to go back to this level and
you know, go really far. And it feels like a.
Speaker 2: Lot to be clear, like that's and it's an option.
Speaker 1: It is an option, which.
Speaker 2: Which personally I do love that because I am your
patient gamer who doesn't have an hour to like play
on some but yeah, please continue.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And that's why I think it is like it
is fair for I think there's like both perspectives work
absolutely fine. I think for me, it's just I liked
how what's the word I'm looking for. I just liked
how structurally Returnal worked. Where Sorrows it feels a little
weird to me because you come back to the passage
to talk to your sort of crewmates, and I feel
like there's this conflicting idea of Sorrows as what Housemark
makes is the sort of bullet hell action set piece
game and then you have sort of the prestige third
party Sony Air to some of the interactions in the
hideout where they like want this more cut scene focused
and more story focused, and they want this crew that
maybe they can turn into like a trans media property
down the line and make a TV show or a
movie out.
Speaker 4: Of or something.
Speaker 3: They just they feel conflicting in that regard where I'm like,
we have this thing that doesn't really coalesce for me,
and then we have like what's else, what else is
going on in that game, and it just it feels
like two different ideas butting heads with each other. Yeah,
And I think that's where the story stuff falls.
Speaker 1: Apart from me real quick, I was listening to last
week's show when you were talking about Pragmata. Between the
crew and between Hughes crew and Pragmata and the crew
in this game, who is the more forgettable team?
Speaker 2: Oh, Pragmata absolutely?
Speaker 1: Okay, Yeah, I will.
Speaker 2: Say I as I was talking about Sorrows at the
beginning of this podcast, like, uh, check the tape, I
wasn't really talking about the narrative a lot, because yeah,
I'm with you Jesse in that like that is kind
of weak point of the game for me. And I
will say I was trying to I'm trying not to
do too much comparison between Returnal and Sorrows, But even
though they are like intertwined, undoubtedly, I will say I
do think I prefer Returnal between the two. I think
I think Sorrows is kind of like a Breath of
the Wild Tears of the Kingdom situation, where it's like,
once you have those like tools and tiers of the Kingdom,
it's kind of like, I don't know if I could
go back to Breath of the Wild, but like Breath
of the Wild was sort of the undeniable, like first
experience with that kind of game, and that's the case
with the Returnal here. And I do think by a
pretty large margin the Returnal narrative is is better and
more interesting and like plays with the medium of video
games in a way that's really fascinating, and like is
the thing that really pulled me into Returnal when I
was struggling with the difficulty. Like, I think the Returnal
narrative is fascinating and interesting and like really makes you
think and think about video games and think about the
idea of like dying in a video game. Where straightforward
is definitely the wrong word to use with Sorrows, but
it is a little more like, Okay, these are characters
on a planet, where Returnal was kind of like I
don't really know what's going on with her mind? You know, Yeah,
what's the what's.
Speaker 1: Like the basic story premise for this, like who are
you playing? And and does the game contextualize the roguelike
structure as well or at all the way Maternal did not.
Speaker 2: As strongly as Returnal. I mean it kind of it
makes reference to it, right, It is acknowledged that you
are dying and you are coming back, but it's not
as integral to the plot I would argue as eternal.
But the idea is like you are the fourth group
of astronauts who have been sent to this planet carcosa As,
and they're collecting like you know, this material this lunofilament,
if you will, or maybe this astro phage or unobtainium.
You know, there's all these different like words we can
use to describe this this stuff that they have to collect.
But there you go. Yeah, and and you were you're
the You're the fourth group that's been sent there because
the first three have kind of disappeared and they're not communicating,
and it's like a it's like a one way trip,
like you know, you're going to this planet and you're
not coming back. And then and so the story is
like you're Origin and you are like, I'm a soldier
here among these like scientists, and I'm kind of like
here to save everybody and find these missing people. And
it turns out it's a lot more complicated than that.
It's on a basic level. Yeah, y'all have.
Speaker 5: Been saying Carcosa this whole time, and I was like,
that's setting off alarm bells in my mind.
Speaker 3: Based on the King and Yellow King Chambers.
Speaker 5: Yes, yeah, yeah, okay, okay, And does it play a
lot in that sort of like realm of there's stuff
going on here that's going to be like beyond the pale,
like beyond your like a lot of it's cosmic, existential,
cosmic oy Yeah, and.
Speaker 1: Real quick, what is for people like me? What is
the what does the say the King and Yellow or
what is.
Speaker 3: The King of Yellow is? So it's it's three things. Really,
it's it's a collection of short stories by Robert Chambers.
It is a play within those short stories about a king. Yell,
it's about it.
Speaker 6: People.
Speaker 3: A bunch of people who read this book and kind
of go crazy, right, and then the third thing is
the entity the King in Yellow, which is within the play,
within the short stories. It is sort of this this
series of like cosmic cars type things that have gone
on to inspire a lot of other media and have
been inspired by media.
Speaker 2: Before it, And like, I'm not super familiar with this.
It was actually Matt Miller who sort of pointed me
towards this and Jesse correct me if I'm wrong, But
like it predates HP Lovecraft, yes, but it's like pulled
into the love Craft mythos.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it is partially inspired by like Dorian Gray from
Oscar Wilde has a lot of King of Yellow stuff,
and then Robert Chambers and stuff, and then sort of
HP love Craft and a lot of other things pull
from that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I couldn't affirm it is not required yea.
Speaker 5: Yeah, well yeah, even Krco so like predates a lot
of that was pulled into Chambers work. Like it's a
whole kind of like authors playing off of each other's works,
even like Signalis in indie horror game from while Ago
played a lot in this Realm and stuff like that,
But it's a lot of that. We're not doing the
home Mega first turning off the g I show. But
so is there like a decent amount because Returnal had
some like horror elements to it in terms of the
like stuff it dealt with, especially in when you got
to the secret ending and the additional after story stuff.
I didn't play a ton of Reternal myself, but I
watched friend of the show Jacob Geller's like really excellent
video essay about it and and kind of like leaned
a lot from that. Is it playing in those realms
kind of is it doing that stuff well.
Speaker 3: A well? Is a question that's questionable for me personally.
I think it tries to tackle some things, and I
think your mileage maybe on that.
Speaker 2: I think it is I mean visually aesthetically absolutely right,
Like I mean, there's there's some tentacal beasts up in
this thing, you know, and there is like it's very
the sort of threat is very existential and in everyone's minds,
and no one quite knows what's happening, and people are
kind of devolving into like sort of you know monologues
that you find where they've recorded audio logus or they're
clearly sort of losing their mind and they're becoming like
incomprehensible like that that's a big part of the game
for sure. And then and as argent, you're kind of
like if you know you're you sort of think maybe
you're maintaining your sanity, but it's never like fully clear
exactly what's happening. And it's like yeah, and I and
I'm it's I don't know that it's wholly successful there.
But like the reason I didn't really focus on too
much of the start of this conversation is because it's
like it's just feels so damn good to play that
It's like it's like if it doesn't really it didn't
grab me in the same way Returnal does in terms
of it's narrative, but it's like, honestly, like it's so good.
If like you stripped all the story out, I still
would have like really recommended this game wholeheartedly. And it's
like and the story stuff is like interesting. There are
mysteries that like I'm still thinking about and that I
want to dive into more. It's not like bad, you know,
it's not like terrible or anything. It's just it's just
didn't It's just not like I didn't really get emotionally
invested in what was happening as much as it was like,
oh this is this is a great sort of uh,
table setting for what is just amazing gameplay.
Speaker 3: You know, absolutely, I think it it it suffers from
having rogulack elements and sort of being a run based
thing because the ways in which they have to try
and tell the story around that happening I think sometimes
fall short. I think when it does have its moments
of like hey, we're gonna we're gonna give you some story.
Now we're gonna tell you that, it's like, okay, cool,
I have like a clear picture of what's going on
that this is cool like table setting for the thing
that I'm doing. But I think when it really tries to,
you know, pull it all together, maybe for me doesn't
doesn't come together. But also like it puts you right
back in the action and you're just like, yeah, there's
a fun game. I'm just gonna keep playing it and
I'm not really think too hard about it afterwards.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, Housemark is really good at making like
video game ass video games when it comes down to
just pure gameplay, like yeah, I just want to run
an error and shoot stuff and feel cool and they're
really really good at that. Yeah, they do it.
Speaker 2: They'd pull it off here absolutely. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Do you think, as we kind of wrap this up
to you, since they've done Reternal in this and they're
again they're very similar in a lot of ways, do
you think you would want them to do a third
one of these for whatever they do next, or would
you want something completely new from it? Like do you
think they have found like their sweet spot with like
this third person kind of like Roguelike bullet House stuff
and they could just keep churning these out, or do
you want them to mix it up next time? Kind
of like in a similar place with Zelda, like do
they have another breath of a while Tiers the Kingdom?
Or is it time to to flip the script again?
Speaker 2: I mean for the developers, and that I follow. I'm
always of the mind, and especially with Zelda, is that
I don't know what I want from it, right, Like
I am never gonna be disappointed in whatever house Mark
does next, or whatever the Zelda team does next, in
the sense that like when they show what it is, like,
I'm just gonna be like, sure, I trust you guys
to make something interesting. Of course, that could all change
when I actually play it, when I actually get my
hands on it, and it's like maybe I like it
or maybe I don't like it, but in terms of
like what I want, but that my reaction is always
going to be like I don't know what I want,
and I would rather be surprised, right Like I don't
I don't want to dictate what they're doing next in
the sense that it's like I don't really think I
need another game like this, but like I would. Yeah,
I'm sure I would love it once I got my
hands on it, but I also would just love for
something entirely new. The thing that I do hope from
them is that they continue to like integrate narrative into
their arcadie gameplay, because I think that was the sort
of secret sauce of Eternal was that I was like,
they figured out a narrative wrapping to like and they're
sort of arcade sensibilities which are very strong. But like, frankly, personally,
house Mark was not a developer I really was that
interested in up until Returnal. I think what was their
PlayStation four launch game. I mean, like I reviewed Reso
Gun and like I had a good time with it,
and it's like I could play it and acknowledge how
good it feels and things like that, but it's like
without this sort of narrative hook for me, I was
kind of like, Okay, I think I got what I
want out of this. After a little while, it's just
like it's a great arcade thing, you know, but like
I just I really want to like build me a
world and put some crazy arcade mechanics inside of it.
And when I say build a world, I mean like
make it a place that looks like a story is
occurring in you know, which I didn't really get from
like Reso Gun as a point of example.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, when I played, when I finished Returnal, I
wasn't thinking like, oh, I need them to make another
one of these. I was like, I'm cool. I'm whatever
House Park wants to make next, I'll be there. And
when they showed I was like, cool, they made what
what looks like at surface level the first time we
saw another Returnal. That's cool with me. And when their
next thing comes out, if it's totally different, I'm like cool,
I'm gonna play it anyway. Like there, I'm down for
whatever they want to make, Like they have my trust it's.
Speaker 2: Kind of like their their Desperado to their once upon
a time in Mexico or not once upon time in Mexico.
I can't remember what is Robert el Mariachi, thank you,
thank you.
Speaker 4: Marcus.
Speaker 2: Yeah, where it's like, you know, they made this thing
and he like they had the idea and they were like, Okay,
well now we have like some like momentum and probably
some extra money. Like let's kind of like do that again,
but like really do it right.
Speaker 1: You know, we're saying we got to make a third
one with Johnny Depp. We gotta get Johnny.
Speaker 2: Yeah, maybe that is something where I would be disappointed.
Speaker 5: That would that would be wild that they're like house
Marks banking a new game and here's Johnny Depp.
Speaker 1: He can't figure out why he keeps dying in Reawakening
in the same situation.
Speaker 5: He's doing the Jack Sparrow bit for some reason.
Speaker 4: And even.
Speaker 3: I would like to protract my previous statement. Maybe if
that was to happen, I would not be super excited
about the next next Houseboard game. There are a few
things they can do that would maybe give me pause.
That has maybe one of them.
Speaker 2: But I mean, honestly, Jesse. To be fair, though, we'd
be like, oh, Johnny Depp, huh, that's weird. I bet
that game play is real good.
Speaker 3: I mean Harry that in that game.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's very Jack Jack Perrow.
Speaker 4: Jack Jack Parrow.
Speaker 3: That's not there's something there.
Speaker 2: That's not nothing.
Speaker 1: That well, that is Sorrow's. Check out Kyle's review on
Gameformer dot com Right now, Kyle, you got to get
the hell out of here. So I would love to
take Yeah, okay, well I'm glad you don't want to
with us.
Speaker 4: I would love to.
Speaker 2: I would love to leave you all behind and go
back to Carcos. Uh, I would yeah, yeah, but yeah, no,
Sorrow's an early game that year contender for me personally.
I really loved it a lot.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I'm excited. I have not started my copies.
I've been living in Diabolo Town, which we'll talk about
in a bit, so I'm that'll probably tonight. Actually it's
finally starting that thing up. But yeah, we're gonna take
a quick break and when we come back, we are
gonna talk about Diablo four, Lord of Hatred, and more.
We'll be right back. Hey, welcome back to the Game
Informer show, and we are going to dive into Diablo
four's latest expansion, Lord of Hatred. I review this game.
You can go read my full thoughts right now into
sight I spoiler alert. I really like this game. It's
a you know, I reviewed Base Diablo four as well
and really enjoyed it, and I think they've in terms
of like I will say right now, like I played
Diablo forward away play any sort of like live game,
and then I really only check in when there's like
a big expansion, Like I don't really keep up with
the seasonal stuff that often just because yea, frankly, I
ain't got time for that. I got so the phase
to play that's like unless it's like a big story thing,
I was like, oh okay, I gotta go see what
that is. But other than that, I kind of use
that as an opportunity to be like, Okay, I've wrapped
up this new story expansion. I cannot think about this
for a while and come back when they make another one.
Speaker 5: So so where are we on like the lifetime clock
of Diablo now with Lord of Hatred, because like, what
expansion number is this for it? Because I've not played
Diablo for it all. I've played two and three, but
I did not get into four at all. So this
is a second expansion.
Speaker 1: This is the second major expansion they've done, like smaller
like pretty much a seasonal events where they'll bring in
like you know, they'll add new in game content or
dungeons or a boss. But in terms of narrative expansions,
this is the second one. And this is also built
as the finale of the Age of Hatred saga that
started with the original campaign, so this takes this is
pretty much picks up directly after the end of the
kind of cliffhanger ending that Vessel of Hatred had and
just gets right into it. So I mean, I you
can just jump into these expansions without playing either the
campaign or even the previous expansion if you want, which
is nice, and they do a good job in terms
of recapping the story elements that came before it do
these really nice cinematic sort of like here's a story
so far kind of a thing. But I do think
if you if you should probably play those other ones
just to get sort of like the full impact. And
I say that because this game goes pretty buck wild
from the beginning in terms of just some some real
eye widening twist and turns of just whoa, Okay, we're
doing this with this character and I can't believe this
happened to that character. It's a very it's a very
twisty internal expansion in a way that is pretty good,
especially if you're a long time Diablo fan. There's some
some moments that are gonna really knock your socks off
in terms of just unexpected surprises. And it's also it's
a it's a very dark story, which I know it's
like every Diablo game, but I think this one in particular,
like there's some some real grim, some real grim stuff
that happens. So the idea of this game is that Mephisto,
the Lord of Hatred, has returned, playing off again his
kind of resurrection at the end of the last expansion,
and he is running a muck in Sanctuary because he
has possessed the Acarak. Who is this He's basically Diablo
Jesus Like in Diablo, he is this like reververed sort
of like healer prophet that died a long time ago.
Mephisto has possessed his corpse and has resurrected, and so
everyone's like, oh my god, Acharat's back, and he is
using this person's influence to go around and basically win
the hearts and minds of everyone in Skovos, which is
the new region that's introduced in his expansion, and everyone
by doing that, he's just slowly corrupting them. And one
of the things about the story I really like is that,
I this is one of those tropes in fiction that
will always get me sort of not only invested, but
also like riled up. Is anything that deals with like
a a religious leader or a spiritual leader, or and
probably just any leader, but it may be on the
more like spiritual end that sort of like hoodwinks their
followers exactly like that always gets me like particularly fine,
Like I guess maybe because I have so many thoughts
about just like blind faith and just like like following
someone just like I mean, it's a very you know,
make your draw your own conclusions about what is going
on currently in real world events. But this, this expansion
seems like aptly time and way that they probably didn't
plan for. But there's a lot of stuff that made
me feel, things with just how how Mephisto goes about
his uh, his business and mansions.
Speaker 4: Ai Mephisto.
Speaker 1: Crystal might actually be a little less evil. But yeah,
I think they handle the frap. They do the false
profit sort of thing very well, to the point where
you're just like, I'm just like genuinely getting angry at
him for what he's doing to these people.
Speaker 5: That's interesting to hear because for me, and this is
not a reflection on the quality of any of these
games stories, to be clear, they're they're good. I think
that like Blizzard has traditionally done like a very good
job of designing their characters and their worlds and things
like that. But to me, when I think of Diablo,
I think of like number go up, loot drop, make
new character, run through dungeons, like it is such a
like mechanical thing for me. Of of I love it
for what it is is it is like a number
grinding number go up RPG for me. But would you
say that this would necessarily like change my mind in
any way or is this is it still going to
kind of like fall into the camp of like doing
the things that Diablo has always done very well.
Speaker 1: I mean, have you played four at all?
Speaker 5: I've not played four, but again I've played three, I've
played two. I think I might have played one a
long time ago and have very faint memories of it.
I think I remember the is Lee oric in that one?
Or is that too that I'm thinking of.
Speaker 1: I mean I've only ever really played three, and yeah,
like I got in with three, So you know, feel
free to throw your tomatoes at me now, long time
Diabolo fans. But I didn't grow up with Blizzard as
a kid because I just didn't have a PC, which
is really what it came down to.
Speaker 5: He never never bought the battle chests from your local
best Buy and then came home and opened them up
and used the Prima or was it Prima or Brady
that had the pack in guides with the battle chests.
Speaker 1: I watched the South Park episode where they made fund
of World of Warcraft, and that was my introduction to body.
Yeah you need you got it all that that taught
us that we should make fun of World of Warcraft.
Absolutely exactly. But no, to answer your question, I mean,
yes it is that will always be the core of
the Yablo is kill thousands of things on screen and
you're waiting for cool down to expire while hitting the
five other ready abilities and or to and just watching
the screen explode in numbers like that is the experience
and that is still fun. I will say with Diablo three,
as someone that generally values story a lot more than
anything else in video games, they really sort of like
took the time to up their production values, which are
always like crazy high. But Diablo four has like some
really great cinematic cut scenes, like a lot of more
voice acting than I think it's got like the most
voice acting and just cinematics than any of the other
Diabolo games. Like they're trying to tell a very directed
cinematic story, and I like the Bass story and Diablo
four quite a bit. Again, I'm someone that I'm lower
onto total poll of like Diablo fandom, and that's just
from like just lack of experience, like you know, not
coming up with Diablo one and two. But for me,
I remember going through that narrative and being like, oh, yeah,
this is like really compelling, Like I'm liking these characters.
I think, you know, Lilith, who was the main antagonist
of the base campaign, I think she's like with the
flesh cavel flesh Cape. Yeah, that intro cut scene is
still pretty wild.
Speaker 5: So mechanically, like then what gets added in in Lord
of Hatred, like there's there's a new class, but I
think that came out like slightly ahead of the expansion
if I remember two new classes.
Speaker 3: But is new for this expansion, right, Okay.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so yeah, so the two new classes Paladin Warlock.
I got to spend a lot of time as both.
They're both fun, Like they're both very different, Like Warlock,
I'm trying I might like a little bit more just
because it like I kind of like the sort of
focus on summoning and spawning demons and just sicking them
on people like you can. There's like fun spills where
you're literally conjuring portals and just throwing demons and ghosts
at people and just like lobbing them like they're like
basketballs and it's so silly, but it also looks like
really bad ass. And there's just like a lot of
fun sort of like range like field manipulation that you
can do with the Warlock. When you really get into
the nitty gritty of like unlocking the different types of abilities,
like they have like shadow bas abilities that kind of
rely on stealth, and then you got the more like demons.
Somebody like I'm gonna make a wall of demons to
protect me, or I'm just gonna summon a giant demon
that just swings the sword and just clears out everyone
in front of me. And you have all these abilities
going off at once, and it just it's a fun
way to just control and clear the battlefield. And on
the other side you have the paladin, who's a more
traditional sort of like sword and shield heavy bearer who
wields hotly attacks and you can either go you know,
two handed melee weapon, but I prefer using sword and
shield because the shield has its own dedicated skill tree
and you can do some fun stuff with the shield.
Best of all, you can do Captain America style, just
like I'm going to throw the shield and watch that
thing ricochet off like ten dudes, and the shield is
bathed in this holy light and it's stunning them or
doing whatever weird effect that you apply to it, and
that stuff is really fun. Like, they're both a lot
of fun to play, ass So I recommend, like, if
you're getting into this, you know, to make a new
character and try out one of these, cause I think
they're both really fun additions not only to this game,
but you know, you can bring them into the base
game and into Vessel of Hatred as well. Skill trees
have been expanded where they've added sort of I forget
what they call them, but they basically have added new
nodes or perks to the existing trees that allows you
to further customize the skills as you have unlocked. So
you know, originally, when you were unlocking a skill, you
get pick. The only other thing you could do with
that outside of umlocking the skill was that you could
choose basically different variants that kind of change how the
skill performed. Of you know, you were shooting, I don't know,
if you've had an ice spell, you could determine like
well maybe I'll have it fire into like a shotgun spread,
or maybe it'll just be an ice beam. But now
on top of that, you can unlock nos that can
do things where like, oh it fires even more projectiles,
or it reduces the cool down time, or it inflicts
a negative status effect on the enemy. So it's like
it's not like a crazy big change, but it allows
you to again further tweak and customize how you want
your skills to sort of behave, and it gives you
some more things to spend your skill points on because
the level cap has been raised to seventy now, which
is great. There's some there's new torment tiers. In fact,
the torment tier has been up to twelve, which is
pretty wild. And the tormentiers, if you don't know eric,
are basically like the difficulty settings that you choose.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it ratchets up the difficulty and can kind of
be like, you know, to use an analog, it's like
ascension enslave the spire kind of or like heat and
hides a little bit.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, because I think it's been set to four,
so to jump to twelve is is pretty crazy.
Speaker 5: Triple as Triple Torment.
Speaker 1: Triple Torment. That's my favorite Final Fantasy card game. And
the other sorry I'm just I threw myself off of
my own dumb Final Fantasy joke, but I.
Speaker 4: Think about Triple Triad now, yeah.
Speaker 1: Let's go play some Triple Triad. The other big thing
that they've added is they've reworked some of the endgames,
so they've added like the big end game thing that
they've added is a thing called war Plans, where essentially
what I like about it again going back to being
a more casual Diablo fan is that between these two
expansions and just the numerous seasonal updates, they've bolstered the
end game a lot. Like there's a lot of activities
to get into, but it can be a little bit overwhelming,
especially if you just have not kept up with it religiously.
You'll jump in and go like, what are all these
new icons in the map? Like? What is this thing
over here? What is the pit? What are these infernal whares?
What's that?
Speaker 3: Like?
Speaker 1: What do I get for doing these? And war plans
kind of is like a cool funnel that allows you
to kind of like it takes away the sort of
the guesswork or just having to to figure out what
you want to do, and it basically makes a decision
for you where it kind of looks like a almost
like a roguelike style map, even though that's not what
it is, but it offers you a randomized selection of
in game activities that you complete one after another, and
you get rewards for doing them on top of the
existing rewards that you would already get for doing the activity,
So it you like you would fire up a war
plan and it'll say, hey, here's two things that you
can do. You can do a hell Tide, and then
after you do a hell Tide, you'll travel down the map,
and then you'll do a pit run, and you're gonna
get rewards for doing both, on top of just the
rewards that you wouldn't get inherently for doing those runs.
Speaker 5: That makes this is all in the open world, right,
or like the open zone area where you're kind of
running around and doing things, because because the first thing
I immediately thought of that that Jesse will recognize is
like it's kind of like hunts almost like you're doing
a hunt train in a way of like you're it
literally just gives you a tour guide map of here's
like the order in which to do these zones, so
you don't have to like open your map and figure
out the timers and bounce between them. Like you can
just go do this stuff and we will like automate
those processes for you pretty much. I think in my review,
I just, oh, I likened it to like a playlist,
because that's kind of kind am I brand. It's like, oh,
it's like a little playlist stuff. We're not We're just
gonna pick some for you. What's great about it is that.
Speaker 1: You don't have to look for them, because like you said,
it'll just warp you to it, which is really great
because the map is so big that sometimes we're like, oh,
I want to see I want to do this, but
like where is it right now? Or is it happening
at this moment. This just says, hey, do you want
to just teleport straight to this? And at the start
it's like yes, please. It also takes away to barrier
for injury for a lot of them, where it's like,
for like Nightmare dungeons in particular, it's like, oh, you
don't need nightmare stigules to access them. If you have
it in a warplane, you can just do it and yeah,
you get just it's like, hey, complete the Nightmare dungeon,
you go and do it. You get the rewards for
doing the Nightmare dungeon, and then when you complete the
warp plan Path, you get another set of rewards for
finishing the series of in game content. And I really
like that, Like it's like I said, it kind of
it takes the guesswork out of figuring out what to do,
and it's just like I'd rather just have the playlists
kind of just roll the dice and see what I
get because it's like, I want to do probably all
of this, but I just you know, I don't. I'm
paralyzed by choice, you know, So I'm just gonna let
them figure it out. You can still freely go do
whatever you want if you want to, but if you
just rather have the game figure it out for you,
then I think war Plans is great for that. I
don't know how, you know, time will tell how much
this would keep me playing beyond the campaign. I'm not
someone that generally sticks around for super duper long after
I roll credits on a story, Like I'll mess around
with enough of the endgame stuff, but like after a while,
it's like I don't really care how much more loot
that I have. I'm so powerful right now, Like what
else could I possibly get that would make me stronger?
I'm sure there's an answer for that, but it's like,
do I care enough to stick along long enough to
find something insane? But I think it helps. And the
other big thing, or actually maybe not big thing, but
a new addition is Echoing Hatreds, which is a new destination.
It's basically a Horde mode. You just go into you
warp into an area and they just throw waves of
enemies at you that get increasingly denser and increasingly harder,
and you're just trying to survive as long as you can,
and the longer you survive, the more rewards you get.
I think the most interesting thing about that, like it's fun,
because it's never not fun to just mow down thousands
of things. But it's kind of a secret mode, which
I was surprised by. It's it's something you really have
to find and it's only available, Like, for one, it's
only available in the higher difficulty tiers. You can't get
it if you're playing like the normal tiers, And it
relies on finding a special item which unlocks a special quest.
But the item that you need to find initiated is
a really really rare drop that you can only get
from defeating certain like really hard bosses or challenges. Like
I only got to play at once during a review period,
and I only got it because we use like a
developer cheat just so we could see what it was.
Speaker 5: So they were like, this is like something that you'd
have to grind for to get, Like does it guarantee
some level of loot and stuff like that that that's
like basically a way to end game grind or.
Speaker 1: You're talking about for like completing it, Yeah.
Speaker 5: For the Echoing Hatred thing, like like like what is
the end goal that you're trying to get out of it?
Speaker 1: Loot?
Speaker 5: Loot, but like does it guarantee a level of like
super high level loot or.
Speaker 1: Yeah that I'm not sure. I like said, I only
got to play one and I lasted a few rounds,
excuse me, and got I did get some legendaries from it,
so you know, that's nice. I don't that's gonna be
something that players are gonna have to like once they
figure out how to access it, how long they can
last see like what is like the what is waiting
at the end of this? Like how far up the
ladder does this go? And and there's something particularly special
at the end. I mean Blizzard was being pretty coy
about that, which makes sense about you know what, what's
at the end of this? But yeah, I think if
you're someone that just enjoys chasing like a big secret mode,
this is like a you know, something to latch onto
that might keep you busy for the next few weeks
or so.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 1: But yeah, outside of that, I mean they added fishing,
you guys, like fishing.
Speaker 4: You love fishing, well, you can fish.
Speaker 1: You can fish now. It has no significance to player progression,
But it is funny to go fishing because you can
just cast the line. It's pretty much an emo. You
just throw a line anywhere that there's any fishable water
and then just you know, do the basic fishing thing
and waiting for the right time to reel in, and
depending on how well you time it, you might get
a legendary fish, which in itself is kind of funny
to see a fish that's just glowing orange.
Speaker 5: And I'm measuring if I want to say this hot take,
but might as well. I'm on a podcast, That's what
I'm here to do. I feel like fishing has quickly
become the new can you.
Speaker 4: Pet the dog? Thing?
Speaker 5: Yeah yeah, because like for the longest time, it was
like can you pet the dog? Can you pet the dog?
And every game was like, you can pet the dog
in our game? Yeah, And it's like a whole thing
that they like pin a social media campaign around. It's like, yeah,
you compet the dog in our game. And now it's like,
can you fish in this game? Is there fishing? Is
there fishing? And like some games do have genuinely interesting
fishing mechanics, usually because they are fishing games at their
core and things like that. But I feel like fishing
in general sometimes just like we put something in here,
or you kind of loosely do a version of starduse
fishing and you can get fish and then you can
be like, yeah, I fished, yay, and that's it.
Speaker 4: That's the end of it.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean that's pretty much what this amounts to.
Who is like, hey, I can do this now. I
didn't do it a lot because as far as I
can tell, it doesn't leads anything meaningful outside. And you
just add fish to your collection. So if you just
want to be a if you're someone that just wants
to get everything in this game, then this is just
another thing to collect. And like, I gotta try to
get every rare fish. I gotta go to every region
and fish and see what's there.
Speaker 3: Culture. This is what it is.
Speaker 4: It's fishing. Yeah. And if you.
Speaker 5: Could collect the fish and then turn them into a
deck and then play your fish deck against other people's
fish decks, and then it's like it's we've combined Gwent
and fishing into one thing.
Speaker 1: I feel like this makes you like, does this just
make you like Mako Tsunami from Yu gi Oh?
Speaker 4: But yeah, yeah in this form, just.
Speaker 1: Just the fish guy.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that fish guy.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Why hasn't there been a good open world yukioh game?
Speaker 1: You know, it's a great question, Eric, I've been saying
this for.
Speaker 5: I yeah, over over on my my other podcast, Acts
of the Blood Gout. I've long said that I want
like the open world uh card game RPG, but one
where you have to do like Shenmu, you have to
work a job and earn money to go buy booster
packs and rip them and then go to tournaments in
other towns and things like that and try and take
down like other people, which I realize is just simulating
something that you could do in real life if you wanted.
Speaker 4: That's kind of what video games are.
Speaker 1: What has time for that? You know? I actually wrote
a feature years ago for gi pitching a Yu gi
Oh Open World Battle Royale because I was like, you
know that first season like Dualist Kingdom, it's basically a
battle royal. It's like one hundred players and you all
get gradually eliminated and kicked off that island until there's
like one left. So it's like, just do.
Speaker 5: That, build a deck, you take a player out, you
get a new booster pack you can monifor your play
against other people. Yeah, I bet your starships. Oh yeah,
Now it's gambling, though with them might get us in
trouble somewhere.
Speaker 1: I mean, it was always gambling and it was fine.
Speaker 4: There's one gun that you can find.
Speaker 3: That's it. There's one gold scar from Fortnite, I.
Speaker 1: Would says, the gun that Kayla gets pointed at him.
Speaker 3: It has no bullet in the US version. Oh, is
that the one where he throws the card and blocks
the the like lock of.
Speaker 1: The jams the gun. Yeah, we didn't get that in
the US version. You have to watch the japan That.
Speaker 3: Clip one of my favorite things to exist. That is
maybe the funniest clip.
Speaker 5: That's like the saw trap from Yu Gi. Oh, the
one that's going to like take off their ankles.
Speaker 4: Yeah, something else.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it sent a shadow am actually, which some
might say is fate worse than death, who knows. But yeah, anyways,
it is a fun expansion. It's it's the most it
is the most boring thing you can say about an expansion,
but it is just unfortunately true. If you enjoy Diablo
four already. If you like the Vessel of Hatred, I
think you will not even think you will almost certainly
enjoy the Lord of Hatred. It is more of a
game that you already like, with some fun new twists.
The new classes are fun. I think the story is
really strong, and I think also as an end of
a of like a narrative arc, I think it does
stick the landing quite well, which is important. So yeah,
like it's like, if you enjoy the story up to
this point, you would be missing out if you skipped
out on Lord of Hatred. Like some some pretty fun
and wild things happens in it, and I had a
great time playing it. I gave it an eight point
five out of ten in my review. And yeah, once
I maybe get over the fatigue of playing this game
at all hours of the day, I will dive back
into the because I don't have my character anymore because
my review character got built. So when the game launches
proper what next week? I think I don't have to
start a new one, but I do. I missed my Warlock.
He was he was pretty rad, did some really fun stuff.
Uh so yeah, check it out. I liked it. We
are jumping next into Yoshi and the Mysterious Book. If
you wanted something that it is, you know, sometimes compared
this game to Diabolo. They're very similar, as we all know.
They both involve, you know, sentient talking a beast because
Yoshi can talk.
Speaker 5: Yeah, wait, is Yoshi okay?
Speaker 1: Is Yoshi's sentient? Is that? Where you're gonna ask?
Speaker 5: Is the noise? Because because for me it was always
that Yoshi just makes a noise and phonetically it sounds
to us like Yoshi, and so we call Yoshi Yoshi.
Speaker 4: No.
Speaker 1: I think I always thought he just says his name
like a Pokemon like. I think that's just he just
says he kind of does like a like. That's well,
sometimes sometimes he does say says Yoshi.
Speaker 5: That's even more confusing now because he makes non like
fanatic noises, like he makes non linguistic communication and then
does switch to common linguistics to say Yoshi, and that's it.
Speaker 1: He's like a slightly more verbose Pokemon.
Speaker 3: Yeah, language is always evolving. You can't. You can't put
language in a box and just expect it to stay static.
It's always changing.
Speaker 5: I do think it gets uncomfortable then if we know
that Yoshi is like more aware of his surroundings than
we know he is, because there's a lot of Mario
games where you got to dump.
Speaker 1: Yoshi in a pit like that's and he's okay with it.
Every time he comes back. He has no hard feelings.
He doesn't say, hey, what what happened last time? What
was that all about?
Speaker 4: He's just like, is that the same Yoshi that comes back?
Speaker 3: I said, you know it egg symbolizes rebirth, it's the
same Yoshi being reborn.
Speaker 1: He's a phoenix. Yeah.
Speaker 5: We have the same thing with toad, where for the
longest time it was like toad and then we find
out that toad is actually like a full like species
with their high from kingdom.
Speaker 1: But there's like the capital there's capital type yeah might
be yeah, capital t toad, and then there's lowercase te toads,
which are like random toads.
Speaker 5: The Last of Us but it's like toads that are
screaming is.
Speaker 3: Like that's yeah, toad is just that given life. That's
actually if you played The Last of Us like one
hundred and twelve, when that comes out in four hundred years, uh,
they'll actually get to the point where humanity has gone
so far that they Toad is actually just the last
of us universe five thousand years in the future.
Speaker 1: Oh man, if I ever interviewed Met, I want to
ask him that theory of like have you ever had, like,
have you seen the last of us? Have you ever
considered that normal people that were infected with the corps?
Is that what happened?
Speaker 5: I just think it's weird that they call room together.
We Toad goes to like compete in Mario Kart. They're
just like, that's Toad. It's like Toad is is a
group of people that's not just like that that Toad
doesn't get a name, Like that's not a person.
Speaker 1: At least.
Speaker 5: Okay, I have what about you? You're not wrong, You're
not wrong. The Pikachu does not get named by Ash.
So we also got a cancel Ash now. Yeah, well
because he's cool, because only whaying people nickname their Pokemon
just saying also true, also true?
Speaker 4: Yeah. Anyway, Yoshi Yoshi in the Death Note?
Speaker 3: Yeah, how many before I could say it?
Speaker 1: Yeah? How many people is he killing this game?
Speaker 3: Actually a lot? Okay, So, like I've been like running
around saying that Yoshi in the Death Note for like
a couple of months now because I think that's incredibly funny.
But also what I accidentally like backdoorded my way into
is learning that it is kind of like the Death Note,
because the whole conceit of this game is that you
are jumping in to the book and you're doing different
levels about different creatures the book named mister e get it.
It's like mystery.
Speaker 1: Oh, that's what they're going for. And I did not
realize I stood for something.
Speaker 3: I mean it might but mystery, you know.
Speaker 1: No, that's that's that's way, you know. I had a sorry,
I had a similar sort of like wordplay revelation with
Minish Cap. We Alex and I streamed Zelda the Menish
Cap and someone a chat said, it's supposed to meet
like diminish diminished cap, the Minush Cap. You're supposed to
say it is diminished cap because the cat strinks you. Yes,
and we had the same like, wait, was that that's
what they were going for? Like I've never noticed.
Speaker 5: That, like Phoenix down is like a feather, like the
down of a Yeah.
Speaker 1: The same thing.
Speaker 5: Miles Prower, did you ever see a pup named Scooby Doo?
Speaker 4: Yes?
Speaker 5: Probably it took me years to figure out that the
kid was named red Herring, not because of his well
because of his red hair, but it was a play
on that he was a red Herring.
Speaker 4: They always suspected him.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so Feir, I watched that when I was like seven,
So I don't think you're supposed to get that when
you're a child.
Speaker 1: But yes, mister E, mister E and the RADI.
Speaker 3: So you have mister e h and you know all
the different contents of the book or the different chapters
and the different levels you will go through it sort
of like sketched watercolor sort of throughout. And so chapter one,
which is where we got to primarily play in the preview,
was the Wild Woods, and so you know, first level
you go in, there's like a little flower guy and
you put him on your back. And instead of most
Yoshi games are like point A to point B, it's
like just kind of side scrolling level, very chill, very
low stakes. We're vibing, you know, Yoshi Yoshi not a
complicated game. It's not Kaiso Mario. However, Yoshi the Serious
Book it works on more of like a zone, so
it's like a two dimensional zone. So I think vertical
and horizontal. You're not just trying to get from point
A to point B. You are exploring the region to
do a bunch of different stuff. And so there's a
primary goal in every level. So like in the in
the flower level, it's the first level I played, you
throw the flower guy on your back, and he's like
your little pal, and you're getting here basically, and you
get a power anytime you put somebody on your back,
So like each of the different characters will give you
different utility, and so the flower guys, like anytime you
go across certain plants, they will bloom. And so the
conceit of the first level is like, hey, go make
all the flowers bloom. Very simple, very simple task. But
as you were sort of going through this, there will
be other things that start to happen. And it's a
game about discovery. It's what I've been saying is it's
a game about being curious and like rewarding curiosity. And
so I saw like a branch, like a tree brushel rustling,
and so I threw an egg at it, and a
chi guy fell out of the tree. And then I
got a little like stamp next to the tree and
it was like find found shy guy and I got
a star, I got a little trinket for it, a
little goody, and I was like, oh, okay, cool, there's
like little hidden objectives along my way. And then I
found like fifteen of them, and I like, oh, there's
a lot of little objectives, little things going on. And
then when I completed the main sort of objective, I
you know, I made all the flowers bloom along the way,
and it was like, cool, you did it. Here's you know,
you jump into this portal and the level, and then
the book kind of flipped a couple pages and it
was like level one and it started populating with all
the different discoveries that I had made, and then it
let me know that there was a bunch more stuff
I hadn't found. There was probably thirty or forty discoveries
in this one level of just small little interactions that
you can have across the entire level, and you click
tokens throughout a level and you can use those to
purchase hints about other discoveries within that level. So if
you're stuck and you can't really figure out what interactions
you're missing, you can, you know, purchase them with the
with tokens that you get throughout the level and they'll
guide you towards it. And then I, you know, I
completed that level and it moved on a mystery was like, hey,
so we discovered this new creature. What do you want
to call it? And so this is where the death
note comes in because you get to just write a
name in the book. It does not kill the creature,
to be clear, but you do get to name the
creature or whatever you want. So in the example we
saw in the presentation we watched before playing the demo,
they named the Shai guys Hank. They were just like,
it's called Hank in my game, and that is the
species name for shy Guy. Moving forward, in that game,
it will never refer to shy Guy as shy Guy.
It will only refer to them as Hanks throughout the
entirety of the game. In every which way you would
imagine shy Guy would come up, it's called Hanks. So
when it's like find five Hanks instead of five shy Guys,
it'll be like, uh, bake bread with Hank. Like it
just uses that across the board in every option possible.
Speaker 1: And so, yeah, is there any sort of like safeguards
for like what I'm getting to.
Speaker 3: This is what I'm getting to. I did not try
because I'm sitting next to a Nintendo rep and I'm
not gonna just start hyping away because like I'm I'm
here with the PR person and the Nintendo rep, and
I'm like, I I don't need to do this. But
I didn't.
Speaker 5: I did go full blue, but I would like I
would put butt in there or something like that just
to see.
Speaker 3: I did, and they were like, yes, there are filters.
They were very good.
Speaker 1: Okay, Dick is just short for Richard. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I did not put it through its paces. I did
not feel like testing this. I did not want to
be the grown man playing the children's game, writing curse
words in the book and coming off that way just
like wasn't wasn't my vibe wasn't There wasn't the vibe
of the preview. But I did ask because I do
think that that is like an incredibly valid question. There's
no like online connectivity to this game. So like if
you're calling your stuff like an obscendity, it's not getting
like sent to another person's switch, you know what I mean.
So there is a level of like, yeah, you don't
want your children doing that. Sure, I get that. I
understand that. Every you know, every parent's got their their rules.
But it's not like it's gonna start infecting like other
people's games the way that like some of these online games,
if you can get things past some filters, like other
people might see them.
Speaker 5: I feel like that's been a weird Like I can't
I have no proof of this. I just have vibes
alone to go off of. But ever since Nintendo basically
said like you can't post to Twitter anymore, like a
lot of the share stuff like shared to social media
kind of got pulled out, or there's like an extra
barrier to it where you have to save the screenshot
and then load it to your phone and then put
it on things. And then Tomadaci life just came out
and all of the natural sharing is turned off there.
So you have to have like an Algado hooked up
to your dock or something and able to get that.
This is is Nintendo's answer, like we get to do
whatever we want, but you have to have like a
layer of plausible deniability between all that.
Speaker 4: That's the moderation.
Speaker 3: I mean, like their their level is just like some
filters because like you can still post screenshots. They don't
have like the screenshot cancel thing, you know, like like
Toma douggas. It's not like this is just like there's
a filter, like so you can't write really obscene things.
I did not ask like the details of the filter,
like what it will and won't filter. I wasn't really
thinking too much about a contrasts, like, hey, you can't
write like certain words in this right, and they're like, yes,
you cannot write certain words in this. I was like, cool,
great that being said, I just kind of let the
game name but whatever it wanted to and it will
when you're like, hey, just make a name for me,
it's just gonna give you the name of the thing.
Little mouser, you know, shy guy, what what it be?
Bugby like or bug Yo? Sorry, Buggy is the other one.
So Yoshi's interesting because it is a game of discovery
and it is they are Nintendo's in this like exploratory
era is what I've been calling it, where like you
have your Breath of the Wild, you have your Mario Odyssey's,
you have your game recently, I can't docy conk Bananza
Mario Kart World, even where you're kind of they're kind
of just giving you, like, just go poke around, just
constantly go try things, and we have systems in play
that will interact with one another, and you will constantly
be given little little trinkets, little sweet treats as you
will for constantly doing this. You know, Core Oxides and
Breasts of the Wild Mario Kart doing the coins and
the little piece switches and stuff like that. But Nanza obviously,
like you just start digging in a direction, you're rewarded
like one hundred times over. They're just like filling your
dopamine receptors with little things. I think with Yoshi, it's
interesting because it's not overly complicated. It doesn't change how
the game controls. The game is still very simple, jump,
throw an egg, eat, run around like base base level,
still very simple. But if you're like a child or
somebody who's playing this and just kind of trying different
things and being curious, you're constantly going to be rewarded
for it. And I think that just feels good. I
think it's an interesting evolution of Yoshi. It doesn't it
can still be the chill, fun, low stakes game, but
you can have a lot more going on. It can
be a lot more dense than it is in its
current state. Like I like Crafted World quite a bit,
but like Crafted World's pretty pretty straightforward, is how I
would describe that game. It doesn't do a lot to
really up the annie. I don't even think you can
get hurt in Yoshi in the Mysterious Book. I didn't
see a health bar the entire time I was there.
I didn't get hit by anything that did damage to me.
I didn't find any any sort of pick up, like
health pickup or anything. This game is very chill, very relaxed.
Looks great. The watercolor aesthetic. You hop into the book
and you know, paints it in front of you. There's
a ton of different power ups. I found a sentient
skateboard that I was writing around that was pretty sick. Yeah,
I was like, I don't know a Yoshi and the
Mysterious Book went from a game that I really didn't
care about or even really think about all that often
outside of making dumb jokes about it, to a game
that I'm like, legitimately pretty excited for.
Speaker 1: It sounds really because I'm a soccer for games that
like you kind of like catalog things or like scan
and collect things, and it sounds like that's like the
crush of the game. But if you're someone that is
looking for like, oh, I want a new Yoshi p
I want a new Yoshi's Island, I want to use
Yoshi's lily world, is this so much about platforming as
it is about just kind of like poking around the
world and finding.
Speaker 3: There is a lot of platforming. I don't want to
discount that. There was a whole level I played where
it was literally a bunch of lily pads that made
you know sounds and you're bouncing on them, and a
lot of the challenges and secrets were hidden behind. Okay,
you actually have to bounce on all these lily pads
in a specific order and like you're doing like lily pad,
lily pad, and then you want a ground pound on
the third one to get up to a higher level
because you can't repeat hitting a lily pad. So there
are like platform challenges and there are like there is
something pretty I don't know if it's difficult, but it
is like you have to think about it. It is
in intentional platforming in Yoshi in the Mysterious Book I
wouldn't say you're finding like super difficult platform at least
in the stuff I've played. Maybe the later levels have
some more stuff. It definitely has a little more focused
on exploration, but you still are platforming to get to
all of these different places. Sure, it's not just like
a static like walking around like you are. You are
jumping and there are platforms that are kind of to reach,
and so maybe you have to find an item that'll
help you get up there, or use the frog ability
to make bubbles you can bounce on the bubbles to
get up there and stuff. So there is I guess
it is not traditional platforming if that's what you're getting.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like it's not like an obstacle course that you
got to run through and jump and dodge.
Speaker 3: And maybe a level or two, but not that's not
the main primary like verb I would use for or
adjective I would use for Yoshi in the mysterious book.
Speaker 1: Okay, interesting, all right, well yeah that comes out when
it's like this summer right or next month.
Speaker 3: It's it's like the May something.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's about a month from now. Okay, awesome, Yoshi
and them serious books switch to exclusive correct. Yes, I believe,
just switch to awesome. But yeah, I'm I I like Yoshi.
I feel like every time I play Yoshi game, I'm
still kind of chasing the high of Yoshi's Island then,
and I'm always like, oh, this was no Why did
I Why did I think that these games are? You know,
with all due respect there, they've never really hit that
height again, especially because they've gotten less sort of like
difficult and more just kind of breezy and it just,
like said, more chill and just kind of more laid back.
But I really like Wooly World. That's kind of my
favorite of That's probably my second favorite Yoshi game, behind
uh Yoshi's Island. So but this sounds this sounds cool.
It sounds like, if anything, this is more interesting than
just another Yoshi platform since those have kind of been
middling the last decade for the most part, I'd say, ye,
so yeah, why not mix it up? So I don't
want to hang out with mystery and name a bunch
of dumb put in a bunch of dumb names for
these guys.
Speaker 3: Absolutely?
Speaker 1: Yeah, can you can you rename Yoshi himself?
Speaker 3: Oh that's a good question.
Speaker 4: I don't think so.
Speaker 1: Maybe that's like the last thing, Like, that's how the
game ends. Like, yeah, name from the book. The only
way to save the book is to erase yourself. Yeah,
just typing Donald, goodbye all of Yoshi. Yeah yeah, all right, Eric,
take us home. You have been playing Vampire.
Speaker 4: Crawlers, not a lot of it.
Speaker 5: I will preface that we'll probably talk more about this
in the coming weeks, so I just want briefly touch
on it because it's the hotness right now. But we
got access to this last week while the aforementioned traveling
was happening, so I can verify that this game plays
very well on a Steam deck. That's awesome, which I.
Speaker 1: Think it's important to like a vampire what do we
call the ses? It's a series now do we just
call it ye series?
Speaker 5: We tried to name them so many things, Bullet Heavens,
like like reverse shoot them ups, survivor lights. Yeah yeah,
at Auto Battlers I think was the thing, but that
was like getting mixed in with auto chess and things
like that. Vampire Crawlers is the new game from Punkl,
makers of Vampire Survivors, who basically kickstarted in indie genre
overnight the original game very much. I think taking the
concepts of auto battlers and also tower defense games things
like that, and turning it into this never ending Musso
Horde and Diablo. You can pull a lot of different
just things into the pot to what ultimately makes up
Vampire Survivors. It was a very very good game. Everybody
loved it. Vampire Crawlers is a little bit more on
the nose, taking after a specific genre which I referred
to earlier a Blobber, which is a classic first person
dungeon crawl game, and it's taking so much classic inspiration
that you even have the kind of wased movement with
pivoting your facing left or right, which will immediately feel
strange to anybody who has not played one of those games,
But if you played one of those games, it's going to
feel like home. But the idea is you move through
these dungeons at stages and floors kind of and take
on different enemies. You just walk into their squares and
attack them and it starts a combat, and then the
combat plays out very similarly to a Slay the Spire,
where you have a certain amount of energy each turn,
manna whatever like a resource that meters the cards you
can play. You have cards that cost a certain amount,
and the core mechanic of this game is that you
want to try and play your cards in escalating cost
order in order to create combos that will enhance their effects.
So if you play a zero cost card and then
play a one cost card and then play a two
cost card, that will eat up your whole allotment of
three resources for the turn, but it will enhance each
card's effectiveness as you do so. And so a lot
of after you defeat an enemy on on a thing,
you'll get usually a card reward of some kind, either
a way to enhance a card you already have, or
to add a card to your deck that you kind
of draw through as you do these battles, as enemies
kind of hop towards you with each turn, as a
sort of like slowly encroaching three D space fight, as
they like hop on a plane towards you. It sounds weird,
makes a lot of sense once you start playing it.
I think immediately it's going to feel very at home
for a lot of people, because I think the first
ten minutes of this game almost feel like you're autopiloting.
You're kind of just walking around bumping into things, zero
one two, zero one to zero one two.
Speaker 4: Okay, cool. And then you keep going.
Speaker 5: Where the game starts to open up is when it
starts to give you the options to fuse cards together,
to add those aforementioned upgrades on the cards, to say, hey,
I want this card to fire more projectiles than normally does,
to do double damage, to gain some effect of some kind,
or maybe gain effects when it is played at a
certain point in the combo sequence. And then also the
way you have to think about how the cards you
add are going to affect your combo sequencing. So a
zero cost card could be a really good thing if
that card says every card you play after this in
sequence will have like ten percent extra damage or something
like that. And so you start thinking of it as
like you want to have set up and payoff, or
you want to have some way of having your build
kind of play out the way you want it to
play out. And that is sort of the thing. Like
the step where I'm at right now is trying to
figure out how much of that there is in this game,
because I think that is where the depth is going
to come from. Because Vampire Survivors, I think one of
the benefits of it is that there's a very sleek
and straightforward game to play. You're not controlling a lot
of things. You're not clicking a lot, You're kind of
moving around positioning yourself on the map, maybe moving up, down, left,
right to get your crystals and stuff like that. Reminds
me of the Arcade game Asteroids in a lot of
way if you ever played Asteroids. But ultimately you're just
doing that and then picking something, and then the strategy
comes from how you build over time, how you kind
of manage risk versus reward, and how you figure out Okay,
like I've got a build that's mostly garlic in bibles,
so I need to like kind of keep enemies within
my radius. Or maybe you're trying to go for a
build we're using a lot of the birds that have
kind of this weird shot pattern, and so you have
to position yourself and figure out how you move through
the waves to kind of keep yourself from getting hit
while also keeping enemies in your danger zone and things
like that. Here, it's a bit more Okay, I have
this sequence of attacks that's either going to do a
certain amount of damage or apply status effects or maybe
push enemies back away from me, so they're not getting
too close too fast. How do I get that to
play out? How do I make that work? And I
think the one piece of friction that I'm hitting right
now is that where Vampire Survivors streamlined a lot of
it and made the movement simple, and thus, like the
manipulation and feeling out the technical mastery of higher level
play and higher difficulty play in that game came about
a lot faster here, hopping between different parts of the
map and moving through it. I'm not seeing a lot
of the hallmarks of your classic blobbery yet, where maybe
you have trap tiles, maybe you have certain environmental effects
that you want to play around. Enemies are kind of static.
I've not seen any that chase me or move at all.
They just kind of wait in the squares that they're in.
And granted I've only played through about two biomes right now,
but it kind of feels like there's some degree of
you can find things on the map. You can hit
parts of the map to open up, you know, chicken
in the walls and get upgrades and things like that
and kind of figure out your build crafting from there.
But moving around the map doesn't feel impactful to me
yet and doesn't feel meaningful to me yet, and so
I have a hard time seeing why I'm doing that
versus just like Slay the Spire, where you just kind
of go from room to room to room and just
do the battles in there, and I'm trying to figure
out why the blobbing stuff has to happen in the
first place, versus this just being a deck builder, like
a card building or a card playing deck builder. And
so you know, I'll say, like, I've only spent maybe
about six hours total or something with it, so I'm
not that super deep into it and unlocking characters. It
I okay for normal people, it's a lot Jesse.
Speaker 4: Jesse has known me a long time. Jesse, how would
you describe.
Speaker 5: The amount of hours that I've spent playing games like
Doda two thousands?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's like a like a Titanic amount. And I
think Slay the Spire too, I already have somewhere in
the vicinity of like sixty hours or something like that
since it came out. Like these sorts of games I
like to when I actually like find them really interesting,
I kind of latch onto them and I dig into
them I really want to like piece them apart and
figure them out, and I'm at the point of trying
to figure out whether Vampire Crawlers is going to be
that for me or not. But all that is to say,
if you like the idea of a first person dungeon
crawler with deck building elements, I think it absolutely does
that very very well. I was very warm on the
Steam Next Fest demo when it came out, and I
think a lot of what they have there right now
seems like a really solid game. I don't know if
it's going to be as genre shifting and like industry
changing as Vampire Survivors. And I'll laugh when, like a
year from now, somebody plays this clip back at me
after we're all playing like the millionth Vampire blobber. But yeah, yeah,
mostly I just I see it as an interesting step
for Ponkel in terms of where they decided to go
after making Vampire Survivors. You know, like this is it's
interesting that instead of either kind of doing the same
thing again or just jumping back into the traditional framework
that kind of got them success in the first place,
which granted they were making a lot of Survivor likes
for years after Vampire Survivors came out, but this is
very much like. It feels like somebody on the team
really loves old school games like this and wanted to
make something that rekindled that feeling. And I can see
the love in it. I can see the passion in it,
and that makes me want to spend more time with it.
So I will spend more time with it. I'll report
back later episodes. It does feel like a perfect steam
that game, like if you're commuting or something like that
and you need something that's going to be like quick, fast, easy.
Speaker 4: It's funny.
Speaker 5: We were talking about Sorrows earlier on here, and I
was thinking about another game that came out earlier this year, Mugenics,
that I kind of bounced off of because of how
long the runs are. I personally think like the sweet
spot for a good Rogue Light is like a twenty
minute run, and I think if you get too far
beyond that, you start to run the risk of like
you have to over invest into something that's supposed to
feel impermanent and supposed to feel like you're building something
and seeing how far you can take it and then
going back to square one again. I think when you
overinvest in that regard, it can kind of ruin the
loop experience for me, and I think the Vampire Crawler's
loop is just the right amount where you get like
a really good investment cycle and then get out and
then go back to town and then venture back out,
and you have permanent upgrades that you're spending your gold on,
so you're always kind of powering up in some way
the same way you were in Survivors, where there's kind
of a gradually escalating floor of things will get easier,
even if you're bumping your head against stuff and getting
frustrated with things, you will gradually accumulate strength.
Speaker 4: And get stronger no matter what. So it's a cool game.
I like it.
Speaker 1: Yep. It's when I think about this game, I have
not had a chance to play this either, but I'm excited.
I adore Vampire Survivors. But when I think about this game,
I keep comparing Survivors and Crawlers in terms of just
like the how different they are to Bastion and Transistor,
of like the first game being a lot more I
don't know, we'll say mainstream friendly or just a little
bit more straightforward of like what kind of game is is,
and then for their next thing they go wildly different
and do this a little higher kind of like bar
to entry, like like the strategy game, but it's like
a weird strategy game that's gonna turn away probably a
lot of the people that like their other games because
it's such a different and like there's a little bit
more like to kind of have to grasp with this
one as opposed to the yeah, little one.
Speaker 5: It's gonna look a little bit more intimidating. I think
because of those things I said earlier, where like the
you have to understand the movement and why you're doing
that stuff, and then also get your head around the
card playing and all that kind of stuff. I think
maybe that's why the movement is so like straightforward and
not really adding a lot to the gameplay at the beginning,
is because could overwhelm a little bit if you were
having to think about like if you go play I
don't know, I'm just gonna name like dungeon crawlers like
an etryan Odyssey or like a Strange Journey or something
like that, and you have to start thinking about like
danger tiles and enemies that hunt you and weird teleporter stuff.
And having to memorize where things are on maps and
stuff like that. That adds another layer that a lot
of people do really like, and I kind of hope
is somewhere in this game because I think that is
a cool layer of dungeon crawlers that would be really
interesting to see explored with the tools that they have
in Vampire Crawlers right now. But a lot of the
early game is just trying to get you accustomed to
this is our card system, this is our power up system.
Here are all the things that you will recognize from
Vampire Survivors. You know again, knives of bibles, the oh
my god, the axes that do the little like flip
you out out and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: The Castlevania acts.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and it's still very much is like, oh, this
feels really Castlevania esque and getting big Castlevania vibes here.
It kind of teaches you how a lot of those
things still have a lot of the same properties that
you would expect them to have from Vampire Survivors. Like
I keep going back to the bibles because they're my
favorite weapon in Vampire Survivors. I also really like them
in Crawlers because I if you give me the option
to have like something that orbits around me and does damage.
I will take it. That's that's just like a cool
video game thing to do, is to have that sort
of rotating drone around you that does damage. And in
Vampire Crawlers, it basically is like it pushes everybody back,
kind of bounces them back a little bit, and so
it lets you play like a control game where you're saying, like, Okay,
I'm not doing as much damage as I maybe could,
but I'm controlling the enemy and keeping them out. I'm
keeping them at arm's length. You get to kind of
zone them out a little bit, and it's a cool thing.
So I really want to see how deep they go
with that. But to your point with Bashan and Transistor,
I do think that's maybe an interesting comparison because I
also think I love Bashian and I would be hard
pressed to not put Bashan on a list of like
my twenty favorite games of all time. But Transistor is
the game that I feel like I think more about
and I spend more time going like that that did
some really cool stuff, that did some if I think
about games I want to go back and replay to
like think about Transistor is pretty high on that list
because it did some really really interesting things.
Speaker 1: So good game.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's a really good game. It turns out Super
Giant makes really good video games.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm I'm just so curious to see what the
if like the broader game and audience embraces the game,
this game the way they did, Yeah, Survivors, just because again,
there's just more to it. It's not the like I
I got my mom into Vampyres Vivors because it's just
so easy to immediately I think.
Speaker 5: This one might you might have some more difficulty bridging
that gap a little bit down.
Speaker 1: Teach some cards, you know, how to understand cards.
Speaker 5: And that's the funny thing is, like I hate to
pit two really good games against each other, but like
with the context of this game came out around the
release window of Slay the Spire two. Uh, every time
I was booting up Vampire Crawlers in my Steam deck,
I was like, I could do another Slave the Spire run.
And both of them are kind of card games that
are kind of in the same ballpark, and so my
mind was constantly just ricocheting between the two, which is
to say, like, you know, it's never a bad thing
to have two cakes, right until you have a lot
of cake in front of you and you're like, how
am I going to eat this much cake? And I
think with we we have a two much cake scenario
where but maybe if Slay the Spire is not your
jam and you're looking for something a little bit more
vampire survivors like, or you've you've wanted an entrance into
this genre for a while and you haven't known where
to start, you could do worse than vampire crawlers.
Speaker 1: So yeah, last question, but most important, have you seen
a vampire yet?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 5: I want to say they're in like the second biome
if I remember right. As enemies, I'm like wow, rolling
through the rolodex of enemies in my head because I
feel like most of the ones that I've seen have
been like the plant enemies, the the the bats. Obviously
the bats are everywhere, which I guess a vampire is
a bat if you taxonomically, Yeah, yeah, you never know.
Every bat you see in real life could be a
vampire no way of nowhere. Yeah, yeah, no, I think
I saw at least one vampire as like a boss
or something. I could be misremembering, but yeah, always a
lot of like that. It's it's a lot of the
same sprites and enemies that you saw in Vampire Survivors,
So you'll be doing a lot of the like, Oh,
I remember this weird guy that kind of looks like
Grimer from Pokemon. Yeah, yeah, dude Favor and you just
kind of punch him a little bit and he dies
and you're like yeah, and you do that like twelve
more times than you finish level crawlers. Crawlers, I mean
you're kind of crawling because you do move it like
a snail's pace, you know, you move.
Speaker 3: Once to have any of the enemy's been crawling.
Speaker 5: And there's some skeletons were crawling. Yeah, these these ones
won't heal because because they're skeletons. I don't think skeletons
can heal.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, you know, because if your bone breaks, you
could get it, it'll it'll fuse back.
Speaker 1: Have you ever seen a skeleton wear a cast?
Speaker 3: Oh you're so, you're so right about Actors don't want
to treat skeletons.
Speaker 4: That's the problem.
Speaker 3: You need a skeleton doctor to treat another.
Speaker 1: Skuy Famously, it has been a big problem.
Speaker 4: That's why they call them saw Bones. Yeah exactly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the skeleton community being marginalized, and I for one
will not stand for its vampire crawlers. As you said,
we'll probably talk check in on this game over the
next couple of weeks or so as more of us
get our hands on it and get deeper in it.
But yeah, everyone, that will make for a show. Thank
you so much for watching and listening. One more time.
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thank you so much for hopping on man once again.
Is there anything you'd like to plug or you want
to let people know where they can keep up with you.
Speaker 3: You can camp up with me at Restart dot Run,
where you can find My Sorrow's review, which will be
up at the time of posting this, My Yoshi and
the Mysterious Book preview, which will be up at the time.
Speaker 4: Of posting this.
Speaker 3: Maybe some fun stuff if you follow our social accounts.
I'm going to Final Fantasy fourteen fan Fest, so when
this is up, I'm actually already there. It's already happening.
I'll be there hanging out on the ground floor checking
out all the new cool stuff from Final Fantasy fourteen.
I'm gonna go eat it a jolly be because they're
doing a collaboration. I'm going to some other stuff, So
check out the Restart down Run socials. You'll probably see
a lot of video from that event. So if you're
Final Fantasy fourteen fan who can't make it to fan fest,
check out our instagratt You'll.
Speaker 5: Go from Yoshi and mister E to mister Yoshi p
sure saying.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, that's so.
Speaker 1: It's almost a bar.
Speaker 3: That's yeah. It's like I said, Buck Shurler, that's not nothing,
and so yeah, you can check that out. Yeah, follow
our social accounts because that's what keeps me employed.
Speaker 1: Yes, absolutely, and if you want to follow us, I'm
at Marcus Stewart seven on Blue Sky. Eric, what is
your social handle?
Speaker 5: At C Moosey on the BEASKI yeah, how.
Speaker 1: Could I forget? I'm going to name all the shy
guys and Yoshi's Sea Mousey's.
Speaker 5: The Sea Moosey's, and the fire Moosies their Earth Moosies.
It all changed when the fire Moosey attacked.
Speaker 1: That's what they say every time. Well, thank you guys
so much, and we will see you next week with
another episode of the Game and former show. Until then,
have a good one bye.