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Where Have All the AAA Shooter Campaigns Gone? | Firelink Podcast
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This week on Firelink, Marty, Nick, and KC chat about Black Ops 6's wild campaign, in a time where do don't see a lot of them in the AAA space.
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00:00:00
Speaker
This podcast is brought to you by us. Since Second Wind operates 100% independently, we rely on your support to help us continue delivering the great content you love. Consider checking out our Patreon if you want to access ad-free versions of every podcast, plus your name featured in our video credits, as well as other exclusive perks. So if you like what you see, hear, or smell, maybe, visit our Patreon page and become part of the community today. Now back to the show.
00:00:33
Speaker
Hello everyone and welcome back to Firelink podcast episode number 43 for Wednesday, October 30th, 2024. I'm Marty Sleev, as always joined by Casey Wosu, Nick Calandra, and producer Eric. And if we got a show for you today, we're going to be talking about Sony shutting down Firewalk Studios, the developer of Concord. We're going to be talking about Black Ops 6, which you've all had a chance to play and and sort of where it is currently standing in single player and multiplayer. And we're also going to be talking about stuff we've been playing and watching, but most importantly,
00:01:04
Speaker
We're going to talk about the breaking news because Nintendo music is here. We have entered a dawning of a new age. Nintendo's big announcement has finally hit. I have it on my phone. Let me tell you, we're here. Casey, do you know about Nintendo music? No, this is the first time hearing of y'all.
00:01:21
Speaker
We are here. We are ready. What is this? Please explain this to me like I'm a five-year-old, which this is probably intended for. Nintendo's big ah new reveal is that they have launched a music service. You know like Spotify? What if Spotify only had Nintendo music? Because that's what Nintendo music is all about. It is an app for your phones. You download an iOS. You can download it on Android. I've already downloaded an iOS. Is this paid?
00:01:44
Speaker
No, it is not paid. And let me tell you, the roller coaster of emotions I'm currently going through, first being, this is extremely fucking stupid. Why do I want this? Just put your songs on Spotify and Apple Music. Finally, downloaded downloaded the app, immediately crashed. And I was like, oh no, this isn't good.
00:02:00
Speaker
ah started the app a second time looking through it and now I'm like okay this is kind of cool they have music by different playlists not just games they have individual games that you can see every game it's not every game yet they're obviously gonna be folding things in there's probably like 50 games so far you can look at them chronologically however they have playlists they just have victory music And you could just listen to a bunch of fucking victory tunes. That's kind of interesting. You can take any song you want and you can extend it to like 15, 30, 60 minutes to kind of create your own like study playlist of like, I just want to listen to Donkey Kong Country's Aquatic Ambiance for 60 minutes on loop. And that's because all of the video game songs are created to loop, right? Yeah. so like you could yeah That's actually kind of really fun. And so this is not as far as completely free. As far as I know, there's no monetization anywhere in here. I don't know if there will be down the road, but right now it is. ah It is silly as hell. I don't know why the music just eyes on other things, but it is the most Nintendo shit ever where it's like, no, we need you inside of our of our walled garden. And ah we we don't want you on Apple Music or on Spotify because there may be ah people trying to steal your children. Well, no, it's.
00:03:13
Speaker
to be on those sites, Nintendo would have to pay, right? Like. You don't have to. Oh, I guess. Yeah. Part of the part of the. Yeah. like to be out it like Yeah. so like you might as well know make your own end up Making you use tokens to listen to music. just you wait Well, I mean, it is part of. Oh, so I guess the thing, which I always forget, I always forget people, is there's a but people aren't the 1% like me is that you do need to have a switch online membership. It's not free.
00:03:39
Speaker
Oh, it's connected col okay. I already paid for it. Like everyone, I understand everyone complaining about YouTube ads. I just don't understand what that life is like anymore. Cause as a YouTube premium boy, I just don't understand terrorist era the problems of the common folk. Um, I forget videos, play ads, honestly. So do I. So who do I, uh, very, very silly. But as someone who really likes Nintendo music, I'm going to have all thoughts with it for a little bit. Just like like video game music, like period and Nintendo being just one of the premier video game companies to make music that should just like have Grammys in all honesty. Like there's probably no better pilot for something like this, but like.
00:04:18
Speaker
They should smashify this. like Get every other video game company on board. Put Capcom shit in there, put Konami shit in there. like Listen, we we don't have to be in the in the iron grip of big Spotify anymore. Right, yeah. like let's Let's just have a revolution of video game music composers. it that That would be so cool. i would that is I would spend a ton of time in that app. Really fucking funny.
00:04:41
Speaker
um Yeah, it is ah it is a strange little thing. Nick is already... Nick's actually been listening to it this entire time. How do you how do you feel about it? Obviously, you're wearing your red Nintendo earbuds, your red Nintendo hat, your... Oh, yeah, this is the Nintendo logo now, I forgot. I'm sorry. The P-wing from Mario Street. You know, no. You like and video game music. You're always the one being like, my scorers. I like it on Spotify.
00:05:08
Speaker
I don't um you want to give money to those to those Swedes. I don't know what Spotify is. I will not download this app for Nintendo music. They can put everybody else. No, it's not. It's you these Nintendo Switch subscribers said. Yeah, but you're the same thing when I see like a game is on life black ops was free because I have good bass. Yeah, that's why I'm playing it.
00:05:31
Speaker
You guys don't know where three is. Nothing's add anymore. No, you're right. That's very silly. odd One. The one thing this does point to me ah ah ah is I think going forward, Nintendo is really going to like lean in heavily ah in Nintendo Switch online, like the online, the expansion pack, getting people in there. And I think they're going to have a bunch of weird little things that come as like Oh, in order to use this thing, switch online. They should have sent everyone in the Nintendo Online subscription an Alarmo. Imagine if we all got an Alarmo. Wasn't that a prerequisite for being able to even order it? Like you had to be an online subscriber to like put in the order? I don't think that. Was that the case? No. yeah can I remember they they did the same thing for like those SNES styled controllers for like the virtual console or whatever. Yeah.
00:06:28
Speaker
They're selling you hardware, but like you have to be a Switch Online person to order it. Yeah, that actually might have been right. um This is dumb. Everything's dumb. I like it. Let me start the show with this. That's my, that's my ultimate. Uh, we was either start with this or start with, well, so we fired everyone at firewalk studios and the sports studio and everything's bad. Uh, with something whimsical again. We can, we can like, we can, we can like lead into the SSO.
00:07:01
Speaker
There's not much in in the the Sony story, ah like it's sort of the writing was on the wall for that, but um yeah, in ah in a blog post, it was it was revealed that Sony, after ah sort of taking audit of everything surrounding Concorde and Firewalk Studios, ah they have decided to completely sunset the game and they have closed down the studios. ah It's closed down the studio as well as the support studio, which I can't remember the exact name of. It was in Fire... You know, yeah. So I don't know if you're working, you're working on ah an unpack that kind of tangentially touches on this, but um was a surprise to you at all? ah just I I posted like a very quick thought on on social media that I just can't wrap my head around. This strategy right now of acquiring a studio for hundreds of millions of dollars.
00:08:00
Speaker
funding that game, putting it out and then just closing the studio. Like what? There's no second chance. Is it like somebody on LinkedIn this morning? I saw a post that basically talked about like if No Man's Sky or Cyberpunk or any of these other games, like Rainbow Succeeds or anything that had soft launches, poor launches, whatever, would any of those games or studios exist if they had been funded and made in the last three years and they just went through the same thing?
00:08:28
Speaker
Like what, what kind of, I just, I don't get it. Like I don't get why you would buy a studio for that amount of money because they obviously saw us something in the studio, talent, something, the game, what it, what it was it like. And the fact that like the executives who make these decisions don't have to answer any of those questions is kind of the gross. What is gross? And we've been over this a million times, but like, I just,
00:08:53
Speaker
I've been like sitting on that thought all night of like, what is the logic here? What is the logic of taking that studio and just axing it and all that talent that came with it? Because all you're going to do is three years down the line when things are maybe good again is go through the same thing. hi who We need an FPS studio. Oh, this studio looks good. That's by them. um Oh, fail. Let's close them again. Oh, let's do this cycle again.
00:09:17
Speaker
It just it's ridiculous. It's it's it's infuriating to watch and i'm not even part of the developer team. I just like People can say whatever the fuck they want about concord. The gameplay was good The game maybe not was not good and didn't have the content and like I still can't the bones were there Yeah, the bone like everything felt good. Anybody that actually put time and played it said it feels good to play like there's something here but as far as making up room for itself in the market, it just didn't offer anything unique to do that. So, like, you know, people on my last competitor, you didn't talk about the characters. I was like, don't really give a shit like, yeah, I never heard of somebody buying a game over character designs to be quite frank with you. ah You don't know about the Goon squad.
00:10:02
Speaker
I mean, all right, fine. Still a boy is a thing. But, yeah you know, and like, what should we call it? The First Ascendant, which we previewed Casey, that that live service game from Nexon. I played a tiny bit of that. Yeah. Like, you know, they're leaning hard into those character designs and targeting that audience. just yeah They had a they had a new kind of reveal that was just all just just butcheeks. Yeah, it's fine. I don't care. Like you can do what you want. like And I'm not going to I'm not going to sit here and like claim Concord had a great aesthetic because like It just, and we talked about that before too. It didn't have like that unifying element. It's like, okay, it's guardians of the galaxy beat here, I guess. It didn't like command like its own identity. Yeah. And that's the problem with a lot of these games that we're running into you. Cause that project ethos just launched, which Marty had completely forgotten about when I mentioned it to him, or not yeah launched but revealed.
00:10:53
Speaker
I showed him and he's like, Oh, yeah, that. Yeah. And I'm like, it that it just looks like Fortnite to me. i and So I don't I don't know. I just. You know, I'm thinking ahead now to Haven Studios, the Jade Raymond studio making fair games and the amount of pressure they must be under, because like this thing doesn't do what they think it's going to do. That studio is gone, too, probably. Right.
00:11:17
Speaker
But like part, and again, yeah, we keep rehashing this, but part of the issue is like, what is it that these execs, I should say, think that these games are going to do? Because you could try to make an entry level one of these in this market, especially you have like a cool hook or a new idea. But for like, a fraction of the cost that they usually put in like Concord was a was such a highly polished AAA thing, like it was such a premium looking thing, but just you need just so much buy in for something like that to be sustainable. And like, because it flopped out of the gate, like they just were not willing to give it any sort of leeway, any sort of chance to like, you know, recoup it all. They're like, well, this will never make back the amount of money we spent on it. Cause they're like, they're just looking at that big ass price tag upon launch. And so like, they decided to just cut their losses right then and there. Yeah, I guess. mean You know, at that point,
00:12:12
Speaker
Like what makes sense doesn't really make sense. But what makes sense from the executive's point of view is they lost all all ah faith in that studio to produce a game that would ever make that money, which is why they get rid of them. Probably. I just like it. It feels even it feels like they even have faith, but there's any sort of faith in the studio involved. like It's such a cold and calculated number game of we paid X amount for X return.
00:12:42
Speaker
And the projection is that we won't get extra turns. So all of this has to now go into the scrap bins so we can take that cost and stick it over in this column and like nothing about the potential of studio, the talent of the team, any friendships made along the way. Like none of that factors in our matters. That's right. It sucks. Yeah. i ah It's got to make you think, like, what happens if Sony Bend, like, if Bend Studio releases their next game and it doesn't perform well, are they going to just start asking their single player studios that don't make back whatever they invested into those projects? Like, I mean, the weird thing is I feel like the like, what's the last Sony single player game that hasn't eventually
00:13:28
Speaker
recouped its cost or at least like been viewed as a success. I feel like in terms of single player games, like all of Sony's franchises now. I think over time it probably, like I think over time it ended up selling well. And obviously there were smaller things. There was like that concrete genie game and then maybe like dreams, which is more of like a, honestly, it was probably that game. Cause a little, whatever that, some little big kind of thing was. Yeah. Media molecule. Yeah. Dreams. And media molecules, like somehow media molecule has survived all this. I don't understand how.
00:14:03
Speaker
but thank Yeah, it was a big investment and that tanked hard. Yeah, yeah. Wasn't that whatever servers they had, wasn't that shut down at some point? No, they're sunsetting dreams and then they just shut down little big planet three servers because, you know, I guess you have to maintain all that user generated content and watch out for trademarks and copyrights and all that and it's probably not worth the cost anymore.
00:14:27
Speaker
Yeah, I don't know like i you know. When you used to think of a studio acquisition, you used to think it was to nurture and grow that studio into one of your powerhouse studios. And now it's like, nope, we bought it. You had your chance. Now you're done. I see folks bringing up um Astrobot.
00:14:43
Speaker
um do Do we get numbers, like sales numbers? I know like it's been critically acclaimed. yeah I don't think we got exact cell in those sales numbers, but I think it was like number two or three in NPD last month. so and so that's I think it was like number two after soccer or something. Just the game of soccer. Somewhere to after the sport. um Also feels like AstroBots, probably I would imagine it was a relative.
00:15:09
Speaker
yeah wasn't like me team over a few years It's not like a, that wasn't like a $200 million game or anything. As far as we know, I wouldn't, I don't think anybody imagined Concord was in the hundreds of millions. No, no. um But I guess when you yeah buy a studio and yeah, it's been working on a game for but over half a decade.
00:15:31
Speaker
Yeah, it's just it's really funny that it felt like we did episodes of the show, or the the ah literally, I forgot what the name of the show was, whatever it was at Back of the Escapist, that we did episodes of it that were just focused on, hey, Sony's got a new game plan, and you know what it is? It's live service, because they have 117 live service games in development, and Bungie is going to have fingers in all those pies. And now it's like, well, that's not the case. We might not have any, actually. Yeah, also get rid of Bungie. Yeah, also, yeah. i think they Like what yeah would you buy itself out of again? Because they bought themselves out of Xbox. I bet you're thinking, how do we buy ourselves out of Sony now? Like is anyone there to buy themselves out anymore? Like they they split that team in such a way. Like I think a lot of people left already, but then whoever was left behind, they've like taken some people and put them elsewhere and they've left like a splinter team there. And they're probably, Sony is probably going to dissolve that team and it makes you wonder,
00:16:28
Speaker
Was this the plan all along? Like, just just take it out there, that old Halo beef. Yeah, we couldn't look back at 360 for it. Yeah, they they finally take up on you. They're like, ah, Killzone's coming back. Halo killer. I think that's like the the hard part of writing that script I was working on today is like talking about, you know, the behemoths of the industry and You know, Valorant, would Valorant today in 2024, if Riot launched that today, would it find the success that it did? And I still think yes, because it's under Riot. And like, but I also don't know, like, are the behemoths, does it even matter what studios making these live service games anymore? Is Valorant in the League of Legends universe? No, no, no, I think it's a separate thing. I'm just curious. Yeah. And it just came to consoles recently, so like it's still trucking along.
00:17:22
Speaker
Yeah. i zob ah Zubmer and Zub, I'm going to go back to your original one after this topic as well, don't worry. With the $2 donation, Firewalk, Haven, and Bungie were dead weight buys. don't think I don't think Bungie's a dead weight buy. We'll have to see how Marathon turns out.
00:17:40
Speaker
It's a lot of pressure on Marathon. She's another live service shooter. Extract live service extraction here. Yeah. Yeah. And everybody, everybody groaned when they heard of the extraction game. And ah one of the one of the clips I'm going to use in the impact video for next week is that the if you go to the Project Ethos Twitter page, they're their their pin tweet or whatever their first tweet is shows like the marketing event that they were doing.
00:18:08
Speaker
And it's this lavish, lavish marketing event with all these influencers there. And they're all, of course, hyped about the game because they're there and that's what they're paid to do. And it's like, man, like, you got to you got to stop relying on influencers to hype these games up and use that as your target audience because it ain't working.
00:18:30
Speaker
What about the Dr. Disrespect game? Well, he's not part of it anymore. I don't think he was part of it. um Um, yeah. Yeah. I don't, I don't like, I don't know. What was the last, was Valorant the last, like, what was the last big triple A multiplayer game that like kicked down the door and was like, bam, we're here. Um, you know, cause stuff like siege has been around for a long time. Uh, that's the, you know, fortnight, obviously, uh, feels like Valorant's the last, like,
00:19:06
Speaker
Yeah, you're be right. Maybe Apex before that. Um, obviously it's not a, not a market that I really like have my finger on the pulse of, but no, there, yeah, there hasn't like been a big new, doing, doing numbers. Does that still like, court yeah, it's doing good behind the scenes, but, um, yeah, I mean like Apex, they didn't really, what is that Titanfall, but Apex,
00:19:32
Speaker
Even though Apex is set in that universe over say, you know, per se, it's not really Titanfall. It's Apex. Yeah, Titanfall was ah ultimately a failure, right? like the Not critically, like i but why I haven't gone back to it yet. and Since ah there's been no shooter, shooter campaign in my mind, better than Dyedfall 2 since Dyedfall 2. Yeah. No, there hasn't. I don't think there really has been a ah big breakout new FPS franchise in a long time. It's all legacy franchises, Valorant. I guess if they if they splinter Valorant off and into like new projects, it could be a franchise. I don't think it's a franchise yet. What about this? What about this? Hear me out.
00:20:17
Speaker
Switch 3, Switch 2 is revealed. Switch 3, where am I? Switch 2 is revealed. The curtain's open. Red Steel 3. Think about it. I love I love Zombu. What do you think? I would never buy it. Let me just shut up. How do you already got? How do you already got a Switch 3?
00:20:39
Speaker
Yeah, it's great although that's what it is it's great. You can say it's great. That's fine. That's not what I was going to say. It was extremely bad and the demo where they shut it off was was literally fake. No, I was just going to speculate on what new IP will Ubisoft have for the Switch 2 because they always do that, right? Sure. They always give them rabbits. It's probably be the rabbits doing something.
00:21:04
Speaker
People love the rabbits. I love the rest. No way to know. There's really no way I'm going to be able to switch, switch to exclusive. Oh God. They, didn't they just put people on it. One guy one guy in the basement of Montpellier is like, finally, I have teammates join me. Oh my God. and they're the only Yeah. The only big, you know, that's kind of transitioning into our main topic, but the the big new FPS franchises are all coming out of the an independent market.
00:21:35
Speaker
Ready or not? you I love indies. I don't want an indie shooter. I know I'm weird, and that doesn't make any sense. but I don't think you guys know how to make a... an ah ah i want From my AAA shooter campaigns, I want to see every dollar on the screen. I wanted to be fucking lavish. I want I want my triple A shooter campaigns to be like Frogwa, where I was like, you killed an innocent animal for me to be able to enjoy this. And I'm going to enjoy it. Yeah, that's my ah that's been my disappointment, because like big games have come out like ready or not. Doesn't really have a single player campaign. Yeah. Mm hmm. The final big when you say that, like what makes ready or not big like that's like a huge player base. It has like 160,000 reviews on Steam, so it's sold very well.
00:22:20
Speaker
Do those reviews equate purchases? Oh yeah. You have to purchase the game. You need to put some time into a game before you get into the game. My game is usually successful. My thing is, I go buy a lot of my normie friends. And my normie friends don't know anything about these indie games. If you only indie games, they probably are the ones I recommend them. And then they're usually like, it was kind of dumb.
00:22:39
Speaker
like But you know what the group chats are blowing up about? People love taking pictures of Bill Clinton and Black Ops 6. Let me tell you, the boys are excited to play Black Ops 6 to take pictures of Clinton. ah Before we move on.
00:22:52
Speaker
people respond to that topic. Uh, a couple super chats. Uh, uh, I'm going to start with a captain president with the $10 don't know. Thank you so much. Captain president. Appreciate you. My golden chicken laid a mishap and egg exactly to my specifications. I must kill it now. Execs probably. Yeah. I mean, to see the only thing with the only thing with concord is you can't put all the blame on Sony because firework was independent making that game before somebody bought them.
00:23:18
Speaker
Yeah. So you can't you can't put it all. You can put all of the nonsense of Sony closing the studio on Sony. But the game itself was in development before Sony had anything to do with it. You got to remember that for Concord. That game was just doomed from the start, unfortunately. But Sony allowed it to continue happening. That's true. Yeah. Those monsters. so mean like but They bought it for that game. That's what I mean. Like, that's why it's so weird. So if Sony hadn't gotten involved,
00:23:47
Speaker
What are the chances that it would have come out? and People would have given it a try and they would have stuck with it to try and improve it rather than immediately disappear into obscurity. That that game should have just shadow dropped. I think it might have been done better if it just dropped and people like to play it and nobody had anything to say about it before then. Like Apex? Yeah, like Apex.
00:24:10
Speaker
Yeah, but it would have been, had it been free to play for that. They have any takeoff and then how do you make your best by that? Sony probably has some saying in that in terms of the price model. Yeah. Cause Sony first party exclusives can't be free to play or in subscription service. They're too good for that.
00:24:26
Speaker
Jim Ryan. Honestly, no, this might've been an alternate timeline. Cause if they had stayed independent, they could have probably levied, especially if somebody liked the idea of this game, they put him in like, Hey, can we get a deal to be on PlayStation Plus? Can we shop to Microsoft to get a deal to be on XY's game pass? And that might've helped. Yeah.
00:24:44
Speaker
I mean, as the one person here that put some time into it, I still it still wasn't long term. It was not a unique enough game to sure keep itself going. There wasn't any. Why do you think I didn't put time into it? Because you're bad at shooters. It honestly, it didn't work when I tried to load up the beta. That's so that's my reason. like it just people I want to get into it. It just would not function. So.
00:25:09
Speaker
Yeah. That's a, that's a, that's a sticky wicket. Uh, then, uh, zoom mare with a $2 don't know from the beginning. Thank you so much. Zoom mare last week. Follow-up tablet game suggestions. I made a list for you. Zoom. I remembered. I didn't remember it was you who asked, but I did remember someone made a list or someone asked. And so I made a list. Uh, here's a bunch of games. Uh, Oh no.
00:25:31
Speaker
It's too big. The last game is Rayman. It just says Ray, but it it just says Ray at the bottom. So going through these really quick, these are all games I've played on my phone or my tablet and really enjoyed. Some of them are available elsewhere, obviously, but ah Monument Valley, but but one of the greatest tablet games of all time. It's just a very nice game to touch. Device 6, Year Walk and Sionar Wild Hearts. I put them all together because that's all from the same developer, Simogo. Year Walk was a game, a horror game we talked about on Monday on winbreaker, uh, sign our wild hearts was also a big console switch game. Uh, really it's almost like a playable music video. And then, uh, device six is my, I've said several times, it's my favorite game that no one has played. Uh, and it's like lost meets the prisoner meets, um,
00:26:14
Speaker
a game that can only exist in mobile form. Dona County is a very charming cattamara reverse catamari where you're a hole that slowly grows. ah The room are really great atmospheric. You're stuck in a room and try to figure out how to get out by solving puzzles game. Oxenfree, a really charming, well-written spooky adventure game. Oxenfree 2 is also on there. ah FTL, obviously a classic, one of the the first giant roguelite hits, I would say. 80 Days, great adventure game where you're doing the Jules Verne around the world in 80 days, and it's just you could play it a bunch of times because you're like, oh, instead of going to Morocco, I'm going to go to Paris. What sort of trouble am I going to get in there as you're trying to make your way eastward?
00:26:55
Speaker
Hitman go and Lara Croft go the go series. I think we're fucking great and like the smartest the smartest way to take established IP that square head in like Hitman and Tomb Raider at the time But then tournament these like tactical strategic top-down board games while it kept the flavor especially Hitman go is so fucking good really good I remember playing that actually Yeah, really, really good. ah What the Golf, which is a series that's continued on. I think What the Car was the one that just came out that ah Elise reviewed. But What the Golf is like slapstick comedy in game form. ah The Pathless, a game that's probably best played on consoles, if I'm being honest. But that's by a bunch of former Journey devs who started a studio that made Abzu. The Pathless is my favorite bow and arrow game ever. And I love a bow and arrow game. ah It's also secretly, it might secretly be the best 3D Sonic game ever made.
00:27:45
Speaker
um Alba Wildlife Adventure is a great photography game. I love my games where I take pictures. And then Ray is the Ubisoft Rayman. Rayman Jungle Run and Rayman like...
00:27:56
Speaker
birthday cake run or something. I'm going to be honest. I don't remember what the Rayman games were. called to right and I feel like i remember i prefer remember the logo, having a birthday cake. It's probably not called Rayman birthday cake run. Uh, but it was, uh, it was really fucking good. Uh, I legitimately, some of the best Rayman games. Yes. The run. What is a Fiesta without a birthday cake?
00:28:21
Speaker
and A not birthday party. A not a birthday cake. So yeah, try trial out some of those. ah Don't play Suica on mobile either. I think Suica on mobile is kind of janky. I think Suica works better with an actual, unless you play it with a joystick. You left off the most important game on that list. My apologies. What is it? Balachro. Oh no, Balachros for babies. These are games for adults. Like Ramy and Birthday Party. yeah Although, I don't want to get ahead of ourselves to what we've been playing. You know where I am right now.
00:28:51
Speaker
Not in a birthday suit. Pokemon the card game. Oh yeah. i don't let mess see horror release Pokemon TCG just released on mobile on mobile. Okay. Yeah. And as someone who was a big Pokemon card player only in like the first year, I stopped playing. I'm fucking in. Let me tell you the animations for ripping a card pack. You kind of tear a card pack at the top and it feels really good. I'm getting all that from gambling again. This one from siege. Yeah. Siege has the same thing. Did siege creates do that did siege create opening cards?
00:29:23
Speaker
the yeah like of open ta I think they might have stole that from baseball in the 40s.
00:29:31
Speaker
I never learned how to play proper Pokemon TCG. I don't think this is proper Pokemon. It's like it's a mobile version of the game. Yeah, it's it's designed. Yeah. So I didn't know like when I was playing originally, you had it when you were making a deck, you had to put energy cards in your deck. Yeah. So you had to be like, how many energy cards do I want in my deck? And obviously you need energy cards to do anything in this. You just get one energy every turn.
00:29:54
Speaker
that you can use on something. And I don't know if that's a rule that's changed at some point or not, but let me tell you. Like a streamline thing for the mobile version, maybe. Yeah. And, uh, yeah, so far I'm still, there's like a lot of tutorial shit to do cause it's obvious this is gonna be free to play. They're gonna, they're gonna nickel and dime a lot of money out of folks. Uh, but I, the fat Pikachu card is what the first card I got was fat Pikachu and he's great and I miss fat Pikachu. And so, uh, I'm back in.
00:30:20
Speaker
in seven days if I say the same thing, because very possible next week I'm gonna be like, I am no longer in. I kind of wanted to try this. Like I was just on a stream earlier, like talking about like my lack of ability to just find some sort of card game, like anything with cards in it, I bounced off of heavy and I've had that sort of allure. Like I've seen the allure of like something like Magic the Gathering, like I got into a little bit like the the arena game, like the virtual version of it. I was trying to understand the rules, but then fell off very hard because like it's it's just too fantasy themed nonsense. It's like just elves and wizards or whatever. Fuck that noise. um But I don't know. Pokemon, I might be able to be be swayed by Jew.
00:31:04
Speaker
play Marvel Snap at all when it was. i I told this story, too. I tried it. Some sort of error happened that locked me out of being able to get out of the tutorial. And the fix for it was this super weird walk around that would take like deleting accounts, recreating accounts, talking to actual customer service. and I was like, no.
00:31:22
Speaker
I'll just take that as a sign so i will not if I ever come on to this podcast and say that I have purchased with real money. One of those digital Pokemon card packs. Please take me outside and run me over the bus because I.
00:31:39
Speaker
Pay money for marbles and marblesnaps a different thing. Let me know. Why? why is that thing nope Because fuck off. I stopped collecting Yu-Gi-Oh cards and Pokemon cards and all that growing up because it's like I am buying pieces of paper with a picture on it. Now, if I buy ah got a card pack, I don't even get anything. I don't even get to get the paper. It's just a digital print. I mean, it's no but it's no.
00:32:04
Speaker
dumber of a hobby than games. You're buying a bunch of fucking data, but sending in data on the internet. buy data If I buy the physical cards, I at least can look at them again. The digital card. They don't buy anything. like my like That's what I'm saying. Yeah, my appeal to this remember is that it's free. like It starts free.
00:32:22
Speaker
no Call me out because I like Zelda and I played D and&D. I don't play D and&D because it's in the fantasy setting one and Legend of Zelda is an exception to that rule because it's like the least fantasy fantasy setting you can probably get.
00:32:38
Speaker
Yeah, no, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm here with you. I'm, I'm relatively, I would say I'm fantasy agnostic. Like it doesn't do anything for me. It's not it's not the a minus. Yeah. You, it doesn't, if you're like, it's a fantasy setting. I'm like, all right, just go on to the next descriptor. and in most cases I tolerate it, yeah but like, but by default I am fantasy against Let's get a dungeon and things are delicious inside of ver i'm all it. Cook the monsters, I'm in. Cook the monsters or get a cool dude chanting like in Metaphor Refantazio. Just get a man was chanting his heart out in the middle of a battle. I feel like you would be a very, very big fan of Chronicles of Narnia.
00:33:17
Speaker
Oh, it's a bunch of Jesus stories. And then Jesus came back and he was a lion named Aslan. I don't need that. I keep forgetting they're making a, uh, Greta, Greta. Yeah. She's making that new Narnia movie. A new one. yeah about narn Yeah. Get your money. You go through a fucking closet you and you end up in Narnia. What are we doing here? Fucking British people go wild. Uh,
00:33:42
Speaker
Recharge that in your closet, Marty. Do I think that's adored in Narnia? No. i think I think it would send me to some version of Hell and I don't want to go to Hell. Okay, let's talk about the main topic. Let's talk about a little blopsy.
00:33:55
Speaker
blow i've I've played, ah I think I'm like halfway through the single player campaign. I know Nick, you've played some some of the campaign, I believe as well. And then I think both of you have played multiplayer. We'll start with the multiplayer before we go to single player because single player will kind of bounce us off. I guess we've already, I've already just, all I wanted to say about ah shooter campaigns is I just want them back. I want them back and I want them to be expensive. But yeah, you guys have had some time to play the multiplayer. What do you, what do you think about this iteration of Cut?
00:34:23
Speaker
I really like black up six multiplayer. I do think the the big discussion online right now is like, yeah and it's with every quality to be fair. It's like the maps suck. The maps are good. The maps suck. And I was like, e I I'm in between where.
00:34:41
Speaker
um like This is definitely the first Call call of Duty since 2019 that I've i've actually like really enjoyed the multiplayer from. like i I don't think I put more than a few hours, really, in the 1-4-2, 1-4-3, Vanguard.
00:34:55
Speaker
ah yeah Cold War, either. i don't yeah I didn't put much time into any of those multiplayer. ah the main The main thing for Call of Duty for me, and like I'm probably going to get some flack for it, but I think they should get rid of like the super fast sprint because the maps are just not designed for it. Because you have you have you have your just normal run, then you have a sprint and then you have the like full on sprint and it just makes everything. Yeah, yeah. How do you do that? it I don't learn about a super sprint. the You double click the sprint button. That's when you run with your gun up. I had no idea.
00:35:33
Speaker
Well, you're probably wondering why everybody's moving so fast then. I don't know. I could not see any difference between the speeds of it. OK, I'm going to get that shot. I guess I guess there's normal movement sprint and then your extra sprint or whatever it is. But yeah, I like this just call of duty has become such a such a fast paced shooter. It's hard to keep up with in my advanced age of twenty nine.
00:35:58
Speaker
the sliding, diving, the new Omni movement system is really cool. I really like it. I i think that's something that's going to be in every first person game going forward because yeah I would encourage slide and running backwards just to stay looking forward and running backwards. Still is like that's it's just a game changer. Like it's kind of hard to describe and.
00:36:17
Speaker
in podcast format for you to get a sense of like how game changing it is, but when you actually have the game in your hands and you're playing it, ah I think Casey and Marty too, you'd probably agree, like this is probably the future movement systems. like if it It honestly felt to me like this, like why did it take so long for us to get here? like it It just seems sensical in a way that video games just didn't have the language to express before, but it's like, why can't I just move at full speed in any direction? you Like why just because I'm moving backwards, am I going like half as fast as if I'm sprinting forward? Like just let me move, right?
00:37:00
Speaker
And like it took me a while to like really come to terms with the fact that, like oh yeah, if I just click this stick and I can sprint in any direction, like wherever the stick is, if I click it, did I just start sprinting? And like it feels really, really good, especially in a first-person game where movement is everything. like I've been having a lot of fun in multiplayer. like I played a bunch of matches with my my friend Jeff. um And like it's...
00:37:21
Speaker
like You can see from what Eric is showing on screen right now, like it's just chaotic nonsense all the time. like Stuff is always exploding, bullets are flying everywhere, people are sliding across doorways, jumping out of windows. like It feels like those Super Bowl commercials where like whatever that whatever that series was, where like it was like Action Town USA or something. like It's so over the top. like Your kill streaks can be like remote ah missiles or like helicopters that come down. So like I got through a situation where like someone was sniping me constantly like across a map. So I used my remote missile to just fly straight to where his sniper point was and detonated on him. And it was super satisfying. Like it's just really dumb and really fun.
00:38:03
Speaker
like Those giant missiles lead to such funny moments. It's so it's goofy. It's so because you yeah you like half the time I'll see somebody like trying to dive bomb out a window and there's just a missile come smacking on. I love it. Yeah, this is a yeah, this is the first Call of Duty in in quite a while. I just yeah, I'm almost at like prestige level already. Like that is such a really good time. Jeez. With multiplayer. Yeah, it's just stupid fun. Like I'm having a great time.
00:38:30
Speaker
When Call of Duty hits, it hits. have ah yeah and this is but the so Again, nothing means anything, but they said this is the fastest the best performing Call of Duty ever after 24 hours. But yeah, the combination of game paths and I think it getting good reviews. and ah but but I remember at least for like Black Ops 3 and 4, Black Ops The brand um was almost bigger than Call of Duty, the brand like the name Black Ops like meant something more than Call of Duty means. um Have you guys had a chance to play ah zombies at all? Or do you care about playing zombies? I don't care about zombies. I want to play because I keep like people have been raving about it. So I'm som excited to jump in. I haven't had time yet. And as far as the campaign goes, I've only played the first two missions. I just just haven't had time. I got the photograph Bill Clinton yet.
00:39:21
Speaker
No, I'm expecting that's going to be the most bombastic mission of the key. You're almost there. You're almost there. I'll tell you. Take a bunch of good out of the four hour campaign almost there. But I think it's like the third or fourth level. Activation doesn't like or need Bill Clinton's permission, right? Like he's enough of a public figure that they can just put him in a game, right? Yeah. And he's not saying anything. He's like on a stage and you can see him. And when you like highlight him, it's like governor Bill Clinton, because it's like that campaign rally. But the rest of the level sick because it's actually like a CIA fucking like a blacklist site where you got to go like underground and they're holding a fucking prisoner of war down there. Great. Clinton doesn't know anything that's going on. He's upstairs eating burgers and cheating on his wife. Classic.
00:40:05
Speaker
He didn't do that yet, and he was still the governor, okay? That's the fear. Yeah, definitely to Gio's wife as governor. But the campaign, let me tell you, as someone who, again, says, I want big, high-budget, short, triple-A campaigns, this game is delivering exactly that. And it is insane that every level feels like it was made by different people.
00:40:32
Speaker
literally every level just feels like they're like, just do whatever you want. Like, just don't do like, don't do a regular Call of Duty level, though, but make it weird. So like, there's just like, I think the second level, it just feels like ah it feels like a little mini dishonored map where it's just like little open world European city and you got to sneak through it and get to the top of a bell tower to assassinate a dude. Like how you get there is up to you. How you leave is up to you. um Feels very open ended. Yeah, i've I've heard rumblings that there's some levels that feel like horror levels later on or roar.
00:41:01
Speaker
levels later on, which I'm excited about that. um But I think it's cool. And I want i want a ah big, dumb, first person shooter campaign. And i want one I want it every six months. It doesn't have to be from Call of Duty. I just want someone to make a big dumb one every six months.
00:41:17
Speaker
That's the annoying part of like all these live service games that have gotten canceled. is like I probably would have played a single player campaign of Concord. it the sci-fi is the At least the world and sci-fi aesthetic was cool. you know I don't know but anything about the characters, but cutscenes don't get me excited. like yeah Hyenas is an extraction game. like Put me in a cool-ass heist campaign where I get to do different heists on every mission.
00:41:41
Speaker
Yeah. You know, how are you are you spending hundreds of millions of dollars on these these multi-player games when, you know, the independent developers are doing it for and not even tens of millions. They're not doing the campaigns, though. No, they're not. Well, that's the thing this is they're they're doing.
00:42:00
Speaker
they're spending hundreds of millions of just purely multiplayer experiences somehow. Yeah. Yeah. That ended up having a much longer tail than a five hour the reason. the those the The reason we don't get those anymore is because A, they're not economical to make a five hour thing that people are only going to play once yeah and ah B, they stopped selling super well. It could be economical if you don't.
00:42:19
Speaker
Over a budget. ah No, you got to go. You got to go. You got to spend more money. You got to one place where um like you gotta to get ready money every explosion is an extra 10 million dollars. Keep spending money. You've got to get that Bill Clinton license in there. Yeah. You know, i I yeah. FPS games are like all I all I played growing up, but.
00:42:37
Speaker
Yeah recently like pretty much any fps game at least outside of triple a that has a campaign has been like boomer shooter campaigns and i just mind boomer shooters but also like i just haven't really found that many that hit for me like Doom does or that I get really invested in. Like I like. Yeah, I'm excited for Doom 3 next year. Yeah, pretty much like what you said. I was like, well, like good, like action Hollywood cinematic single pair campaigns every once in a while. I call duty delivers. Yeah, I was really late to the party. I didn't mind Immortals of Avium.
00:43:10
Speaker
I never finished it. it wasn't It wasn't great. It's a good time. That's what I want. if If we were getting one of those every six months and that was one of our six monthers, I'd be fine. like I think ah it was a good time. Yeah, I like that. Definitely wasn't perfect, but it was like a first outing for a brand new IP. like Those things are going to be a little on the light side. like The second one probably would have been nuts. I think the second one would have been great, but you don't get a second one anymore because when your first one costs a hundred million dollars and doesn't sell. Yeah, it costs a hundred million dollars again. Like where is that money going? How are these campaigns like that costing a hundred million dollars? Because they got to pay, uh, Daniel, uh, Darren Barnett and 99 million dollars.
00:43:56
Speaker
ah Yeah. Um, yeah, I don't know. Like what is there literally a big trip? I guess so late. We're getting, I mean, I guess ironically in the next two months, getting to first person triple a campaigns, um, very different than what I'm talking about though in stalker to, and then Indiana Jones, Indiana Jones previews came out and I'm very excited because it sounds like it is very much not a shit. You'll be into it.
00:44:21
Speaker
And it feels very much like a Hitman game with like a deep Indiana Jones story and a bunch of puzzles and you get to punch a bunch of Nazis. so And that sounds ah that sounds delightful to me. Great. You used to do use that right about now. Yeah. Ravnos in the chat out or brought up the point earlier that like people weren't buying those campaigns or like first-person shooter campaigns because like they were a dime a dozen in the Xbox 360 era like we got them all the time but you know on the flip side they weren't really good they're the difference in quality was like there's Call of Duty and then there's legendary
00:44:58
Speaker
Yeah. And like we got we got so oversaturated with them. Like now, now is the time, I think, to bring them back because we're so oversaturated with hero shooters all the time. Like how people are super excited for that Overwatch 2 campaign. And then they just can't. And they just didn't do it. Like you've been making all these cool heroes and stuff and just not doing anything with the hero shooters like that project ethos. Like you announce a hero shooter or Concord, even you're not a hero shooter like ah Who fucking cares like their characters? I don't know who these characters are. I don't give a shit. I don't get to spend any time with them in in the game. You want me to care about them through cut scenes like now.
00:45:40
Speaker
I care about it. It's Ghost in Modern Warfare 2, for example. It says basically Jack Shit. Cool character, does cool things in the campaign that you get to see and connect with. And now he's like the face of Modern Warfare franchise. Didn't do anything. Literally said the same man, the same man's on all those covers. Pretty much.
00:46:00
Speaker
I play played this Black Ops. I've played literally all the Call of Duty campaigns and in Black Ops, I'm sure the dude in a wheelchair is someone I've played as before and I just don't know who he is. He's the Black Ops yeah he's like upskin He's the Black Ops, right? like He's definitely white. When they say Black Ops, he's devil white's like they're talking about that guy.
00:46:26
Speaker
No, I think we I think we played as that character, right? Or was he just in the games? No way to know. I don't know. The thing is I want these to be the same as summer blockbusters where I just I watch them and I just forget afterwards. I watch Twisters. I love Twisters. I remember anything about Twisters and that's fine. If you make another Twisters in a few years, I'll be back.
00:46:48
Speaker
That's fine. um But ah it is funny when you look at, you know, in the aughts in the teens, we had developers like Bungie was making, you know, obviously multiplayer, but also like media single player shooter campaigns. ah Insomniac was doing that and Gorilla was doing it. And now those studios aren't doing those kinds of games anymore. You know, Valve was doing it. Now Valve's not doing any games. ah But we just don't have you know They've moved on to things that are clearly more lucrative because ah I'm sure Spider-Man has outsold the Resistance trilogy by several times. I'm sure Horizon outsold the Killzone trilogy by several times. ah
00:47:29
Speaker
yeah yeah but i don't know i don't think I don't feel like Spider-Man counts because that's Spider-Man, right? You put Spider-Man on a paper box and it would sell. It doesn't count as what? well you put what about What if you put Madame Web on a box?
00:47:41
Speaker
that's not is that smarter band or is that No eater of worlds on a box. I don't like no, I'm gonna be honest No, what's a big bad and then then the latest venom that new no, I don't like I know Scott watchers and chassis says So do FPS RPGs like cyber bugger immersive sims counter are these guys talking about just a big action adventure linear king. I'm just talking about big action. Yeah Yeah, that's there's plenty of very different thing I feel like Yeah, let me and that's not me discounting any of those games because I do like the like dishonored and and and I've really liked Deathloop the other year. um And if I wasn't scared of ah RPGs made by Westerners, I'd probably like Cyberpunk. But yeah, yeah, I'm just mostly talking about the thing. we used to They used to be a dime a dozen, but they're not anymore.
00:48:28
Speaker
Yeah, you know, as you know, like it's mainly that if you want that kind of stuff, you really got to you really do get to look at the in this sector like the new the new trend right now is like trying to do the half like likes because we see a lot of those and now it's he's tried a couple of them now. So I guess maybe we're going through the we went through the retro stage with boomer shooters and as those start to not sell, then we're going to go through the half life stage and then the call of duty stage. Yeah, we'll end up back here.
00:48:58
Speaker
Yeah, there there is one game, Eric, if you're on my my Twitter, I just shared it. The guys that made that on. Well, fuck, what's it called? Hong Kong Massacre. I think Marty, you mentioned that to me before that top down one that kind of looked like but the line John look for. Yeah, the one that I look forward to inspiration from. I hate it. They were like, we we took inspiration from Hong Kong. I'm like, that's just how I mean, like you got to. Yeah. Yeah. But they're working on some really cool looking new first person shooter. And then we did get a tree paying to we have talked about that. That was a pretty bombastic fear like single player campaign. And then it's got an exponent. It's titled though. <unk> That's true. It's true. I squared. And I'm like, what are we doing here if I can't type this normally? There's also not a ah one.
00:49:52
Speaker
It's like it starts there. Well, the the original three paying was a mod, I think. The mods, not a game release, right?
00:50:03
Speaker
Yeah, it depends on who your is game conception starts. Insurgency insurgency. cave Where does life start in a game conception app mod? ah Yeah, I don't know. We didn't fix the problem, but we'll probably get some cool games coming up. That's not what we want. Whatever. They'll be fine. Yeah, I still I still think I mean, like, well, battlefield, they're working on single player for that. Yeah, battlefield. Remember the last time we tried that?
00:50:32
Speaker
The lesson to try that was battlefield hardline. They didn't do a campaign for 2042. Not 2042. They did. They did like campaign missions for Battlefield 1 and Battlefield 5 and people liked them. I like the battlefield one. There was one that starred Michael K. Brown and that was like them trying a campaign for the first time in a long time. Battlefield 3 and 4 both had Call of Duty-ish campaigns. Maybe it was four.
00:50:58
Speaker
Yeah. Or was it three? I just remember it being really bad. Like, i probably it's probably four because three was okay. I got, I want bad company back. I'm so sad. I also forgot we're, we're getting a blade. Was that kind of co there's vampires. I mean, he's a sword, but he does also use guns. Yeah.
00:51:21
Speaker
He also doesn't appreciate fools who try to ice skate uphill. So who does? Yeah, exactly. also That's like an arcane joint. That's going to be more dishonored than, you know, big dumb for for the shooter, right? So we're Redfall. I mean, that's the other arcane. No, but remember Redfall. Do you guys remember Redfall? Yeah. I forgot about it until this moment. We do remember Redfall. The FPS campaigns that neither of you probably played through the Metro franchise.
00:51:48
Speaker
No, I've never played a metro now. Those are damn good. Wow. This is exactly what you want. Aren't those aren't those the first two G's? Those are like single player things. Oh, yeah. The first two are like basically can't call it duty ish campaigns. And then Exodus has slightly more open areas. Almost like why was everybody getting all been out of shape about bullets, his currency or whatever was going on in that game?
00:52:11
Speaker
Because there's both there is both as currency, but it's not like RPG. It's it's to give it a little bit of the survival aspect. Yeah, get that out. No, we don't know. It's good. It's a burst of the shit. I'm saying that's a different beast. I want to be a different beast. Yeah. There's Metro 2033 and less light are just straight up linear action campaigns and you use the bullets to upgrade your weapons.
00:52:35
Speaker
the military currency youketon's money so Things are upgrade your weapons. All right. I just want so easy to kill things yeah excuse yeah put that easy just easy to kill after after you finish Metroid Prime. You were playing a Metro series. No, I don't think we're going to talk about no.
00:52:59
Speaker
ah let's talk about bought andnna be a no notice thought we went We took it to the high console and ultimately it was no because we've already agreed to play off Kingdom Hearts look yeah no i'd wrap that simple and clean a kingdom heart series lasting 15 years with Marty and Casey. Uh, what if, oh no, before we go to what we will, we've been playing and watching a fat cock $2 don't know. Thank you so much. Fat cock. I got diddied. Someone grabbed me as a meat shield. I Jesus Christ. I don't make me talk about Diddy in super jets with your name being fat cock. ah ah chas What we've been playing, you know what?
00:53:39
Speaker
I've been playing a couple of things. I'm just going to start because we got to fucking get through this. We don't have time for lollygagging, dilly-dallying, any of that. I'm playing three things I want to talk about. Well, obviously Call of Duty, but three other things. Super Mario Party Jamboree, the new Mario Party game. I've still only played it against CPU, so that's the loneliest party there ever is. However, i gonna go out I'm going to go out on a limb. Incredible Mario Party game.
00:54:04
Speaker
ah The levels, excellent. The minigames, so far, almost unanimously have been great. And really interesting little wrinkles. Like there's these partners that you can roll over on like the board. You can cross a partner and a partner joins you. So you got like Yoshi joining you and everything is doubled, but the good things are doubled and the bad things are doubled. So it's like, hell yeah, you landed on a blue square. You got two times the coins. Hell yeah, you pass the star. You could buy two of them if you got the money, but it's like, oh no, you landed on Bowser. He's gonna fuck you up twice.
00:54:32
Speaker
So I like the little, I like the risk reward thing. The games are great. The the levels I've played so far have been great. um ah It's not saying a lot. I think it's the best Mario Party game on Switch, which one of the Mario Party games on Switch is bad and the other one's pretty good. But ah yeah, big fan of it. to One and three chance of being good.
00:54:51
Speaker
ah Nice. Yeah. There are three Mario Party games on this one console. Have they released Mario Parties that often usually, like within the same console lifespan? Yeah, there was three on N64. I think there was three on GameCube. And one Wii, one on... They don't mandate to have three on every console. Yeah, they just fart these on Wii U. Not on Wii U, don't worry. Oh, well.
00:55:15
Speaker
The, uh, uh, the other new game I've been playing is, uh, the most recent Shinshan game, Shinshan Shiro in the coal town. Uh, this is, Shinshan's like a popular little Japanese, he's like Japanese Dennis the Menace. Uh, however, the last two- Yeah, yeah. Where he's like a little, he's like a little five-year-old, but he's like a real, he's like a little shit, just like Bart.
00:55:35
Speaker
War Bar's a little shit. But ah the last two Shin-chan games ah have have ah pretty much been ah like games in the Millennium Kitchen, the Boku no Natsu Yasume series. So those are like the life, like my summer vacation where you're... get on summer vacation and you spend the summer, you run outside in the morning, and you go catch bugs and you go you go find weird little egg corns and you're going helping folks out. And it's like very peaceful, calm, serene, like small slice of life that doesn't last super long, but like a great little thing to spend time on for like an hour, an hour a day to make it actually feel like one of those like when you would check an animal crossing every morning back when people were playing it. ah Was that a good fit for the Shin Chan universe? like Because that seems kind of incongruous with that it shows energy. Yeah, because like the the Boku formula is normally like very serene. It's like, oh, these like gorgeous pre-rendered backgrounds and like you could hear the cicadas and everything. And it really feels like sort of that that ah dreamlike taking a grasp at like what childhood was like, whereas ah
00:56:41
Speaker
Shin-chan is just like, he's like a little shit. And so it is kind of funny to have him like exist in this world where you're doing all these serene things, but also being a little shit. However, this game has Cold Town. and Let me tell you, Cold Town is pretty much where little shits go. And so it's like, there's this like second town that's almost like Pleasure Island from Pinocchio, where like, where like and all the kids like smoke cigars and turn in the donkeys and everything.
00:57:03
Speaker
I haven't put a ton of time into it, but I've been, again, as I like 20 minutes and night I play like one or two days inside the game, really enjoying it. This is like one of those formulas that give me, give me infinite money shooter campaigns and a little fucking rascal enjoying his summer. And those are the two games I want every six months. Give me one of those.
00:57:22
Speaker
And then the last game I've been playing which I'm probably actually gonna write about next week for ah My my written column, which I put up a written column earlier this week on the patreon This first one's available to everyone but the next couple are just gonna be for the $5 tier and above I've been playing through Metroid fusion as a sort of playing Metroid Prime with UKC has got me. I played this one at launch, which it launched, I believe simultaneously with Metroid Prime in 2002. This is the GBA game. This is it was originally called Metroid 4 because it was just the fourth main Metroid game. And it's a very strange game in that it simultaneously feels like an upgrade from Super Metroid because of small movement and control things like Samus is now able to grab onto ledges and pull herself up.
00:58:07
Speaker
And that's just like a small things that makes navigating the world that much better. However, the setting of the game is just this research station, which to me feels like it it does not contain the same ah ah sort of a hate sense of place that like Super Metroid has, like Planet Zebes and even like the planet on Metroid Prime, I think feels like such this cool, like lived in, like, oh, you can sense like the history and flora and fauna of everything.
00:58:34
Speaker
ah So I don't like the setting as much. And then ah the game is very hand-holdy. Instead of just being this big sprawling interconnected open world, it's like you have a hub but and then six elevators that you could take from the hub. And so you'll do something and then your AI on board, like your computer commander will be like, oh, now we have to go to to zone six so that we can take care of this problem. And that sort of stuff I think is kind of, I don't know, just kind of
00:59:04
Speaker
and then try to find out where you are kind of thing. It sounds like an era where maybe they were trying to make the Metroid series more mass appeal-y, right? Like they were spending a bunch of money to put a big, big shiny one on console. So it's also... just get people familiar with it, even on our popular handheld system. And let's make sure that that's a smooth and easy transition. Yeah, I think that I think you might have hit the nail on the head there. But enjoying it so far, really great little horror elements where there's like, there's like a there's this like sort of weird living organism you're trying to find and the organism can copy other things. And this organism copied Samus at her full power. And then you obviously get depowered. And so you you'll hit certain areas where
00:59:48
Speaker
It's like, oh shit, like the evil Samus that is fully powered is here and all you could do is run. Which again, if you played Metroid Dread, it kind of feels a little bit like that where you like enter suit certain areas and you're like, I got to get the fuck out of here because this thing's going to mess me up. So I like those moments. It's good stuff. Thumbs up. That's all I played. Video games.
01:00:06
Speaker
Nice. I have been still playing metaphor. And tells you I'm very proud of you. Ten hours in in the desert on some weird contraption taking your joy. That's your ship. That's your ship dog. It's a good old chicken. No chicken walker. Very interesting thing. Definitely. Yeah, definitely. So loving the combat system, I think.
01:00:29
Speaker
Yeah, I gotta to stop playing it late at night before I go to bed. I start taking the dialogue and it's like reading a book and I just start passing out. Yeah, like okay like i I also started metaphor and be putting me to sleep, man.
01:00:43
Speaker
Did you get to the first dungeon? I don't know what counts as the first dungeon. I feel like I've played like maybe three hours. I know I'm not very far in. Yeah, yeah you'll know when it's like here is your goal. You have two weeks left to go fucking infiltrate the castle. OK, I'm like right outside of like some mind. they're Like, hey, go go check out this mine. That's where I'm at.
01:01:03
Speaker
I definitely, uh, I definitely liked the characters in this. I mean, I, you know, like I've kind of said before, I'm just much bigger into, into fantasy over the persona setting. So I'm definitely enjoying the characters of this and definitely the environments are more interesting because I've never been to Tokyo. Sorry, Marty. But whenever I go, then I'll i'll let you apologize to me. I'm up from fucking Wisconsin. And always just say how you love playing persona because it feels like you're going back to Tokyo.
01:01:33
Speaker
I do. I do love Tokyo. Oh, sorry. There's like 10, 10 slacks came in that I'm needing answers right now. So just keep talking. o yeah ah Yeah, so I definitely plan on second with it. I think kind of like I can't remember what what game it was. Marty you told me to play just in like a chapter like Star Wars Outlaws, but like a yeah mission or two a night play like a channel like episodically. Yeah. Yeah. And that's definitely how i'm I'm treating this. So Casey, if you are honestly like that, I would recommend like
01:02:07
Speaker
like taking a piecemeal. Yeah. Yeah. Get there. Like get there. Like a story beat, like a cliffhanger. Like you're treating like a TV episode and then put it down for the night because it can get radically is because they do a lot of talking. And I know you guys are saying that persona.
01:02:26
Speaker
which does not really mess with JRPGs. um It still feels like a lot of downtime between the game, but like it is early, right? So like that's probably more than usual after like the gameplay loop like really picks up. I gotta say, like I've been going through all the tutorial stuff. um like I get the gist of how the combat functions, like how you engage enemies and like how they want you to kind of like get your squad to like attack as a unit and like work off of each other. None of that is interesting to me yet.
01:02:56
Speaker
And like the thing that's supposed to be the big draw so far is you know the style, the setting, and the story. And that as well has not hooked me yet. like I don't care about their mission. I don't care about you know the kingdom that's in peril. like i don't I don't feel like it's doing enough to draw me in with all of the exposition that they are dumping early on.
01:03:17
Speaker
i think Mardiel probably agree with this. I think you have to get past the first dungeon before you really get invested in the story. And that's that's fair. Like I know these things take some time and like I am still early on and I want to like I want to feel what the hell Metaphoria Fantasia was doing for everybody else. I'm going to I'm going to keep chipping away at it and hopefully um that that turns around. Yeah. I do music though. God damn. That's a banger of the battle song. Yeah.
01:03:44
Speaker
ah Yeah, other than that, I'm still working my way through Silent Hill 2. I haven't made any progress since I talked about it last week. You're not still making your way through what?
01:03:56
Speaker
I guess not at the past week. ah two I've been too stuck in Call of Duty. I keep saying I don't have time for anything, but I was just playing Call of Duty multiplayer all week. So, you know, it is what it is. But I I'm now I'm now I'm stressing out there because Dragon Age comes out on Friday and I'm damn excited for that game now. So. a Yeah, I need to find time for stuff. I did. I did sit down and binge all of the got caught up all the way up on the penguin last night, which damn, that's a good show. ah Really, really good.
01:04:27
Speaker
Yeah, I'm still very um totally different than the Batman. Very dark, very gritty. I love it for that. I'm just very curious how the movie, the upcoming movie is going to. Yeah, go that PG-13 ready, because this is very much rated R. Yeah, I don't think a Batman movie needs to be R. I think you can you can do a lot of things with PG-13, but um like, I don't know. I don't know. yeah i don't Like, you know, the anime series are.
01:04:57
Speaker
Don't need our ratings. He could go to the red light district and you just don't need to see like full frontal nudity. Yeah. Penguin, you see him. That's fine. Whatever. but Yeah. yeah well i'm one Penguin doesn't body shame. I'm working thinking from ah not even that not even an aesthetic thing, but like just the dialogue of the show is so I felt I feel like it's so different than the movie. Very HBO ish.
01:05:21
Speaker
if Lots of cursing all the time. Yeah. cur word Like every other sentence. That's how you get those awards. I guess. more's written shes everything Just ah just a weird thing. Like it's it's just something I keep thinking about as I'm watching. You know, it's like, man, like ah it makes me really excited for where the the second Batman movie might go. It was just because like this is exactly what I like from superheroes getting like really dark and gritty kind of superhero take some things. Which you know, who you'll love as Zack Snyder.
01:05:53
Speaker
He made a whole moon full of rebels. Yes, I can't do it. I don't see that. I can see that teaser for Daredevil today, though, and that looked pretty damn cool. Oh, yeah. Maro dropped a bunch of teasers, actually, for ah a bunch of cool looking stuff. They've got like a new animated Spider-Man show on the way. There's a there's a new animated ah like show based in Wakanda, like in the Black Panther universe as well. Like Eyes of Wakanda. I don't know what the hell that's about, but I am interested.
01:06:19
Speaker
Yeah, they said it's like ah almost an anthology where every episode is like a different, like a Wakandan black op somewhere in the world to retrieve some kind of fact or something. Like maybe it's like literally like trying to get artifacts back that were like stolen by colonizers or something. Right. um Yeah.
01:06:36
Speaker
Uh, cool. I do. I do want a shout out to, uh, how man, I'm, but I'm terrible. The actress is named actors and actresses names. Uh, the actors from, uh, no to the summer too. No, the actress playing a Sophia, uh, from how I met your mother.
01:06:53
Speaker
Oh yeah, k Christina and Milliati. Yeah. God damn, she's good in this role. She's great. Yeah. i Like I don't, I haven't seen, I, I know she's been in a lot of things. I just haven't seen her in a lot of those things. Cause I really only know her from how I met your mother. So seeing her pop up in the penguin, I was like, holy shit. He's a phenomenal in the Andy Sandberg movie Palm Springs, the sort of groundhog day movie that came out a few years ago. Forgot about that movie. Yeah. as kill a then i say remember the pan hook Ah, a little Groundhog Day goof. That was intentional. Casey, you been playing anything, watching anything? Yeah, pretty much just ah the like chipping away a little bit of metaphor, ah which I talked about already. ah But I did get to watch a bunch of stuff. Funnily enough, I watched these both back to back, and they were both related to each other in unrelated ways.
01:07:50
Speaker
um And I think they they speak to each other in a really cool way too. Like I watched, um first I watched the American Society of Magical Negroes. Like this is a movie starring Justice Smith and David Allen Greer. And it's essentially, it takes the trope of the the magical Negro in like movies. If you've not heard of this trope, Dave Chappelle does a amazing skit about it. It's essentially like Will Smith in The Legend of Bagger Vance or Michael Clark Duncan in The Green Mile where it's like,
01:08:18
Speaker
some black character is like a sidekick to some white character and sort of inexplicably has weird mystical powers to help the white character out over the course of the movie. yeah And it's just it's just a very odd but consistent trope throughout like cinema. And this pokes fun at that by saying like, Oh, that's a real thing. And those Negroes are magical. There's a whole society around it. And this is the reason why ah this has to happen. And like, the undercurrent is actually like a a pretty interesting um message about kind of just the black experience in America. How like, um like, generally speaking, like a lot of black people have to measure their comfortableness and their safety against white people's comfortableness and safety. And so it's a commentary on that aspect.
01:09:08
Speaker
Um, but I feel like near the end, the, the plot or the, the message that they're going for kind of falls apart because they tie, they tie everything to a bit of ah a love story. Like the girl that the main character who was doing this new job now.
01:09:23
Speaker
Uh, he has a crush on, but the guy, the white guy, he has to help also has a crush. And that's his ask is that he wants the girl who he also has a crush on. So it's like, Oh, do I sacrifice my wants in order to make this person comfortable for the safety of me and all black people everywhere?
01:09:39
Speaker
Or do I reject this and basically say, like no, this is wrong? The answer is obvious right from the beginning. But like the movie takes the entirety of its runtime to kind of get there. And then when it ends, I feel like that conversation doesn't go anywhere anymore. like They just kind of yell at you, like hey, this is wrong. We never should have been doing this in the first place. But they don't interrogate that in like a meaningful way. So it feels very shallow.
01:10:02
Speaker
by the conclusion. But I think it was a good attempt. Like i I want to see more stuff like this that kind of plays with. Just the role of like black people in media, like becausere just talking about, hey, this is this is stuff that black people deal with when it comes to entertainment, right? And funnily enough, that's literally what happened in the next movie that I watched right after American fiction, which stars Jeffrey Wright, right? Yeah.
01:10:29
Speaker
And ah the premise for that is Jeffrey Wright is like a super intelligent, ah affluent um black author. Like he's like working as a credited university or whatever. um And his books are like, you know, real hoity-toity and stuff. And so publishers kind of aren't buying. And so he's pi PO because the stuff that's selling is sort of like this kind of trashy black gangster fiction and stuff like that. So out of spite, he writes a really terrible black trashy gang story thing. yeah And then everyone wants to write wants to ah buy the book. like He's getting movie deals, he's getting all this stuff, but he wrote it under a pseudonym and he's trying to pretend now that he's this sort of ex-con who wrote this story about his upbringing, but he's doing it through gritted teeth because he's so like he he feels he's so much better than the level he's had to drop to to start seeing the success.
01:11:17
Speaker
And so like it's this movie is a commentary on how ah long held complaint that black people are only ever seen in like a couple of lights when it comes to stories that are told about them, either slavery stories, ah you know hood dramas, ah stuff like that. And essentially, his whole problem is like, why are these the things that people want to see? Why are these the things that sell? like I would rather just do something that has nothing to do with that. And those are stories he writes.
01:11:44
Speaker
But the movie itself is a story that doesn't do any of that. like It's literally about his life as a writer, his family at large. like He's going going through like a lot of like struggles with like his his siblings and his his late father. ah He has a girlfriend drama that's going on. So all that's happening in the background. It's a super interesting, super poignant family drama. But then the story within his book is like this nonsense that he's rebelling against and sort of coming to terms with the success of that uh, story and like his connection to it. And like it does, it does a whole lot to interrogate kind of just black stories in general. Like what counts as a good black story? Like should a story like this have any merit like in, in, in people's minds or whatnot. And why is this the sort of stuff that people gravitate to? Like they give kind of well-reasoned, um, not excuses, but well reasons
01:12:38
Speaker
well-reasoned excuses, I guess, for why kind of both things can exist in some level. um And it takes like a real meta approach to its ending. like it doesn't It doesn't tell you at the end, like hey, this is the right answer. like They kind of give you options in like a real fun way.
01:12:57
Speaker
and so like um This nailed what it was trying to do in terms of like interrogating a black trope throughout cinema in the way that ah the first movie, Magical Society, didn't. And so to see them back to back, like that close is really like having to pin them against each other, like a really interesting way. Like I like.
01:13:17
Speaker
I would encourage doing this as a double feature if you're going to like watch either of these movies, because I really enjoyed both of them. It's just one kind of missed its mark, whereas the other one hit it fantastically, like American fiction. I think it won an Oscar. It won Best Adapted Screenplay. um And that was like the great speech by the writer, the writer director is the guy who core Jefferson, who like, he wrote at Gawker for a long time before becoming like a screenwriter. And then he's written on like his present amazing. He like, he wrote on the good place and masters of none and HBO's watchmen. So like, yeah. Yeah, like seriously. And he gave a great speech to the Oscars where he was like, hey, instead of wasting $200 million dollars on a superhero movie that everyone's going to hate, make $102 million dollar movies. Like give people like me $2 million dollars to make a movie that can win you an Oscar instead of making these $200 million fucking disasters. So it's a better bet. Like, yeah. Yeah. Strolling paper. Almost great in it, too. Yeah, everyone was great in it. Like Tracey, Tracey Ellis Ross is in it. um
01:14:23
Speaker
ah Maxine from living single, I can't remember the actor's name, but they're all in it. They're all great. um it was is ah like they The way that movie drops exposition is probably like the best way I've seen exposition done in general in like a really long time. like Or maybe I've just been watching really shitty stuff for like a long stretch. Because it's like, okay, here's all the backstory, you need to know it. Now we're going, now we're moving. yeah Whereas like the course over the course of this movie, like you learn so much about the characters in such natural,
01:14:52
Speaker
ways and dialogue. Like I was really just enraptured the whole time watching it. So that's probably the best thing I've seen this year. And um yeah yeah, I just really liked it. Yeah. Reminds me of a ah movie brought up, I think all the way back on breakout. I don't know if you ever got around to watching it, Casey, but the harder they fall. Yeah, I do. Yeah. Yeah. Such a such like a different, unique take on a Western.
01:15:19
Speaker
Yeah, that movie was great. Literally, it literally like intermixes black culture with the Western and it's it's wild. Yeah, I thought it was really good. We've got to go back. I want to rewatch it at some point.
01:15:31
Speaker
I feel like I read something. He was tied. to Oh, he did that Book of Clarence <unk> last year. Same guy who did Harder They Fall. Did the Book of Clarence. I did not know that. Book of Clarence is really good. I feel like I talked about that earlier. Yeah, there was something else. you guys He's attached to something now and I can't remember what it was. But, um could ask movie so ah and else ah yeah, Yeah, I finally went back to Attack on Titan because I forgot that I've never finished it because of how long they took to like go back and rap up yeah final season partner where to season
01:16:03
Speaker
ah start watching So I was, I was pretty lost when I went back. I gotta to be honest. Like I watched one episode and it had to go back a couple more episodes to like try and react with me myself, but I'm in the thick of it now. Like I'm i'm back on like that, that curve of the final arc.
01:16:17
Speaker
and um Man, that's a really good show. i get still i don't I don't know if the ending was disappointing. I don't remember how people felt about it, but like the way you follow that main character and his motivations, and and then you get to where he is, where I'm at, like like how his convictions have led him to the decisions he's made, it's like, yo, know he is wrong, but I get it.
01:16:45
Speaker
It's like, I see where you're coming from, friend. Yeah. Like, just saying take you back to watching the it's it's a really, really good way. And i don't I don't mean to trivialize anything that happens in the real world, but like, it's it's a good microcosm to sort of tell you how these like long lasting feuds and conflicts can happen. And how like by the end of it, like after years and years and years of conflict, it's like,
01:17:15
Speaker
Nobody here is a good guy anymore. like there's There's no righteousness to what's happening. like It's just conflict. And at some point, folks need to like have to decide to just stop. And it I think it did such a good job, especially near the end of being like, when now we're going to put you in the point of view of the quote unquote enemy. Yeah. And like, what is that going to feel like? How do they feel about the characters you've grown to love? Yeah. And they did it in real short order, too, to like really make you understand them and connect with them and realize like, oh, there's a whole other side to this. Like, yeah.
01:17:47
Speaker
Yeah, but the ah yeah, so yeah, Aaron Yeager is like a fascinating character. Like it is great to where he started, where he ends, and like, especially when you get like about going into exact ah detail when you kind of figure out everything that was going. There's that one episode, I think it's like from you 2000 years ago. Yeah. Well, you kind of just watch that. Yeah. It's like a bunch of puzzle pieces fall into place and you're like, Oh shit, this was like really impressive. Um, yeah, pretty good stuff. Yeah. I know people were kind of underwhelmed by the ending. I think a big thing like that. It's just like, I don't know how you land that. Um, and so I, I give a lot of people need to grow right like, I feel like that sort of stuff happens often where it's like the end of a show like this,
01:18:26
Speaker
um Like the characters will literally start as children and then by the end they're adults. So like the solutions to their problems as children Grow like you can't win the day by just beating the bad guy Yeah, which is what you thought when you were a kid when you're an adult. It's way more complicated. than It's like a societal a societal lot that no one person or a group of like plucky people kids with good ambitions can ever fix. Right. So like, that's always going to feel less like triumphant, I guess, whatever the resolution is to say about that. Let's say something about that. It's a game of Thrones has something to say about that. Yeah. and Listen, we can all agree brand the broken best story. and he vis That's why I also give slack to the end of Game of Thrones, because like, what ends well? Like, it's very hard to do. And I mean, I could have ended better. I'll say that.
01:19:18
Speaker
I'll agree with you though. Yeah, you'd have to be that. um Sorry to open that one for you, chat. Last couple of super chats before we wrap up. Fatcock just wanted to give $50. There was no ditty in this message. Just a little like a Pac-Man man kicking something and it said super effective. I don't know how any of those things work, but I loved it. Thank you so much, Fatcock. And it's not so good. We're the five-year-old don't know. Thank you so much. Now I want an Orochuban Ichibu game.
01:19:48
Speaker
but and To be honest, so I don't know who this man is. Oh, this is a little hamster. I know this hamster. I thought he had. Where is hamster first she' seen this hamster? I've seen this hamster. He's great. He's a little medicine. I like characters who are little medicines. Nick, I think you'd really like Shin-chan. Like that show is kind of tailor made for like your sensibility, I feel like. Yeah. Yeah. What is this? What is that? I don't know what that is. This is a sense of humor. This is the thing I don't know. This is Oru Chuban. He's just twerking.
01:20:19
Speaker
Yeah, that's your sense of humor. ah yeah And with that twerking hamster, that does it for us today for this episode of Firelink, episode number 43. Before we wrap up, Casey, what do you got going on? Where should where should folks check you out? ah Find me all over the internet at SignalGears9, Blue Sky, Twitter, Instagram, all those places. um I should be ah back with Marty tomorrow, doing some more metal, not Metal Gear, sorry. Oh, damn, Metal Gear. Doing some more Metroid.
01:20:48
Speaker
Um, also, uh, me and a fiance should, well, actually, no, I think we're going to a wedding or something this weekend. So probably no wedding stream. You probably know if you're going to a wedding. I should probably go get you a suitcase. Probably no. But, um, yeah, we may not be, I'll let you guys know. Just follow the Twitter and you'll have all the information you could ever need. Um, I had a mech warrior five review go up earlier in the week. Thanks to Eric, who helped me get that edit out. Um, and I didn't drop already. Darren's movie horror movie thing short.
01:21:17
Speaker
Okay, Mark, Halloween, you should be able to look forward to a bunch of movie recommendations from Darren that I helped put out. So check that out as well. Yeah, we got the shorts channel, but then we also have a sort of original shorts are going up on the main channel through the link here. Darren wrote some I've written a couple on just like really quick hit. Here's a cool upcoming game that you should add to your wishlist kind of thing. So Uh, check, uh, those out and yeah, we'll be doing, uh, Metroid tomorrow, normal time and, uh, resi seven tomorrow, roll time. Uh, what about you, Nick? Uh, I'm working on my next unpacked script for next week. So you'll have that on Tuesday and then, uh, leave tomorrow. Uh, the dev head stream got canceled, cause, uh, Tina's out sick. Uh, I will probably be picking up some people to play that don't spend that time as resume. Yeah, it'll be three to three to five tomorrow. Don't scream.
01:22:08
Speaker
which I will probably scream a lot and do you restart every time you scream? So there you go. Or whimper or restart every time you scream. Yeah. Or whimper or moan or, you know, anything. I moan so much. Let's guys let's try not to moan on stream, please. I can't get five minutes in your game without moaning. Yeah. When I, when I get, when I get jump scares and go, Oh yeah. How long is this game? Is it a short game? I don't know. I don't know anything about it. Everything that looks scary as shit.
01:22:36
Speaker
It's just a jump-scare simulator and you know how know well I handle that. Maybe I'll get Yahtzee on so you can jump with me. You know what? Just don't scream. Have you ever thought about that? You haven't thought about that enough. Just not screaming. Give it a try. about that That's true. Very screaming voice. You're very screaming. I forgot to mention, sorry, the, uh, battle masters. Yeah. I was just going to say, you hear me scream a lot in that. Yeah. i got A lot of whimpering. A lot of Mona. A lot of. Yeah, a lot of motor to that. You had to restart a lot. A lot of discussion, a but a hot heated debate over the rules. ah Ultimately, I think the takeaway is don't worry about the rules.
01:23:20
Speaker
and just there isn't no treatment men deliver real yeah if you If you want to hear me scream there for some reason we under under a tornado watch the day before Halloween. came to say Yeah, i have a it's crazy thunderstorms right now. like My power flicked out from thunderstorms. what the fight fine I didn't realize we're still in the summer.
01:23:39
Speaker
the globe is definitely not warming. ah Excellent. And then obviously the last thing, if you are a member of the Phoenix tier Patreon, you might know that we'll be doing our our monthly movie watch along a half hour from now. So for those for those folks, we' we'll see you back here, not here, but we'll see you in half an hour. And for everyone else, thank you so much for listening and watching to listening and watching definitely words that are spoken in English by people who speak. Thank you for Firelink episode number 43. Thank you, Nick. Thank you, Casey. And thank you, Eric. This was Marty. Thank you all so much. Everyone watching live, everyone listening on your podcast service of choice. We appreciate you all. Have a wonderful rest of your night. And if we don't see you tomorrow, i have ah have a great Halloween. Everyone who celebrates. Bye. Bye. See you later. Bye.