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Summer Game Fest Winners and Losers | Firelink Podcast
2.4k Plays5 months ago
This week on Firelink, Marty, Nick, and KC discuss their thoughts on Summer Game Fest following all the big reveals.
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Transcript
Introduction and Sponsorship
00:00:00
Speaker
This video is sponsored by My Lovely Empress, a narrative-driven kingdom management game inspired by a mix of East and Southeast Asian mythology.
Podcast Hosts and Agenda
00:00:15
Speaker
Hello everyone and welcome to the Firelink podcast episode number 25 for Wednesday, June 12th, 2024. My name is Marty Salida, as always joined by Nick Calandra, Casey Wosu, and producer Eric. Welcome everyone. What a great start. Episode number 25, A Corner of a Century. In X-Men issue 25, Magneto removed the adamantium out of Wolverine's body. And let me tell you, it was sick as hell. That was only the 25th comic that that happened? X-Men. No, there was it started with the uncanny X-Men. Comics are very dumb. X-Men issue 25 happened like when I was a kid. So that's how the comics are very dumb.
00:00:58
Speaker
what What episode of break where Breakout did we get to before The Great Void happened? Well, there was a hundred and you weren't there. Oh, shit. I remember getting to a hundred and you weren't out there. Yeah. I don't think it got too far. pass off It's at least a hundred. At least a hundred. Yeah, if it would have gotten to a hundred and eight, I would have made a lost reference. And I've never made one of those before. But welcome welcome everyone. Welcome to to Firelink. We're really happy to hear you have you here. We have a great
Summer Game Fest Highlights and Lowlights
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Speaker
show for you today. We're going to be talking about a little bit of leaks. Last week we talked about how leaks happened. This week we got another cool leak from Epic. And so we'll talk about a couple games that were
00:01:33
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ah possibly confirmed, reconfirmed, ah hinted at in that leak, as well as I wanted to do a little bit of an Elden Ring check-in, because I personally checked back into Elden Ring last night, and let me tell you, I do not know what is going on in the lanes between. I'm like, I need to cut i need to catch up. So ah with with confirmation of how to access the DLC slash some stats, of how many owners of Elden Ring will actually be able to access the DLC at launch. I wanted to get your thoughts on that. And then obviously the big topic tonight is going to be us kind of giving a a breakdown, a little post-mortem of Summer Game Fest. We were here all weekend doing 20, 25 hours of live streams of all the big shows, the indie shows, all the fun stuff.
00:02:14
Speaker
ah So we just wanted to give sort of our highlights of winners and losers. And this isn't just like individual games. This is kind of like conceptual winners and losers. What ideas, what companies, what what thoughts won and sort of which ones came out of Summer Game Fest ah hobbling a little bit. So we'll we'll chat about that as long as well as stuff we've been watching and playing. We did it. now How are you guys? What an intro. What an intro. What? One of the greats, I'll i'll say. One of the top 25. I think Marty and I are about to ready for a break. Okay. Ready for a break. No, I feel slightly ah like, I feel like the in Uma Thurman in Pulp Fiction when she got the adrenaline in her heart. I feel like I got that by seeing demos of Astrobot and seeing demos of Star Wars Outlaws.
00:03:03
Speaker
and and downloading a bunch of demos from Steve next to us. I feel like I got that in my heart knowing that metaphor refantazio is right on the way. And let me tell you, they said it's not going to be horny. They lied to us. It's absolutely horny. How do us? Who said the first part? Who said it wasn't going to be morning? I think they said there's not going to be dating, but I think that's because the stuff, the sort of dirtiness we're going to get into that game. Skipping all the dating. Yeah, it's just friends with benefits. It's all coming out levels one through one through nine. It's all about coming out level 10.
00:03:35
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um But yeah, that's ah that's that there's a lot a lot of exciting stuff coming out
Personal Anecdotes and Humor
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of it. I feel recharged. That's that's nice to have that in the summer to where you feel recharged and gives you the energy to get through, usually ah a quieter summer and then into the crazy sprint of the fall. See, I'm irritable now because it's like a heat wave coming through Kansas City and it's like 90 degrees today. As soon as it hits 90 degrees, I just know. That's when I get in Twitter fights. When the tea the the temperature gets turned up, then I get turned up on Twitter. You have air conditioning because that could do. I do. Either one of those could could could help us move you to a better imagine if we moved you to like Saskatchewan and you just became the nicest. never get I was literally at an Uber ride the other day and the lady was asking me why I moved down here because I was like, oh, can you turn the AC on? I was like, it's it's pretty hot. I'm sweating back. He's like, it's like 75 degrees. I was like, yeah, I just sweat all the time. It's like, why'd you why'd you move here? I was like,
00:04:33
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I really don't know. I should have moved, like, to Canada, to North. You may know. Yeah, I think a lot of people feel like they should have moved to Canada. Yeah, we'll see. We'll see in a few months if I really made that mistake. ah And, uh, brick in the head with a $5 dono right off the bat. Fitting that we're talking about leaks when Marty's mic leaked at the beginning of the start of the stream. You know what, Eric, I'm not sure if you put my mic early, but if you did, props to you. Okay, I went through a leak. I absolutely deserve that. Absolutely deserve that. ah let's let's Let's dig into those leaks a little bit. We got a lot of stuff today. not want Not a lot of
Epic Store Leaks and Speculation
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time for jibber jabber. We can fold in the jibber jabber throughout conversations like such as right now, but throughout the show, no jibber jabber. So ah ah titles on the Epic Store have leaked ah via the Epic DB, which is an unofficial Epic database.
00:05:25
Speaker
That one up it can be searched to via publisher and whatnot and ah it's already been fixed by epic epics like we we know what's going on and we fix it ah but as of yesterday search my publisher led to a lot of. ah a lot of games that have been projects that have just not been announced yet. And so this was from WCCF tech. ah And this included ah projects from Square Enix, such as the ah PC port of Final Fantasy 16. And more interestingly, the ah remaster of Final Fantasy 9, which is a thing that leaked in those those video leaks. Yeah. yeah from years ago and like everything those are like the Nostradamus like the books that we follow because everything has come to fruition and this one leaked with a codename but people were sort of ready tobu to guess what it was because of various DLCs that came along with it talking about the the minigames and the different weapons and the stuff you would get in the game um and then aside from that a new Troc game from Saber and then the existence unsurprisingly of the Last of Us Part 2 on PC which um
00:06:34
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We assume we'll come probably to coincide with the last part 2 on HBO. I feel like that Turok game might be the codename for their Jurassic Park game that Saber is working on. Could you imagine if they put Turok in that park? Well, I imagine yeah was the guard of Jurassic Park. Yeah, I mean, they have no more incidents. Yeah, I mean, they they could be making a tour game. The Sabers, a huge studio making a ton of different stuff. I just I don't know if I don't. I don't think there's like ah a page to wishlist the Jurassic Park game that they're working on yet.
00:07:07
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So to get interesting. so tora You think Tura could be the code name for the dress? Yeah, I think they might have just call it the code name Do these sorts of ah database leaks from Epic Hint to any sort of timeline for these game releases, or this could still be like months or years away? This could absolutely still be
Impact of Console Exclusivity
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years away. Speaking of that in video one um from a while back, like that had a bunch of games that have already come out, but also had stuff like Final Fantasy Tactics Remastered and Final Fantasy IX Remastered, which have just not even been announced yet. So this could be stuff that is years and years and years away, but they are planning to have PC versions of which it seems like Square Enix is more and more um of the mind to have Square versions. You mean Square wants to more copies of their games? They realized that like releasing an excuse the exclusive on ps5 might not be the best idea Yeah um Yeah, I think that worked back on the ps4 cuz there was like 100 million of them and now on ps5 doesn't feel like there's I don't know doesn't feel like that many people are there there's that many of them out in the wild and people are like stellar blade, I guess was that the last one that was like a
00:08:15
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so Yeah, it's just kind of that and that and rise of the Ronin. Oh, yeah. Right. Yeah. And both of those. Have we heard much about how they fared in terms of sales because they're still a million, I think. Oh, wow. don't I don't know. I don't think we're in the run. It's broken million yet. No. You know what the problem was? They didn't remove any of the clothing of the women. Oh, yeah. Do you imagine if the ronin himself was in like that that Japanese like cloth that that they use when they take the robe off, it probably would have done better. China bones on the guy. And I'm like, I'm sorry. Now, first of all, yeah, that's just. Oh, yeah. First book is in a is a PlayStation exclusive. What did you do in Square Enix? You're not selling your. That's that still hasn't come to PC, has it? First of all, I think so. That is crazy.
00:09:04
Speaker
why wow why yeah It's been over a year. Did they just hit a point where they're like, this is not even worth it for us? Like, I feel like that could find an audience. Like, yeah, if you put that out for spoken is on PC. It is on PC. OK, it might be. a Is it just an epic game store? I don't remember. Yes. They put their games up weird. yeah The square has also had a long relationship with wasy Epic Games Store, including just we talked about how ah like a week ago they announced that Kingdom Hearts is coming to Steam and everyone everyone's like finally on PC. And then Epic's like, well, it's been here for a while. Kind of bought it on here. ah See, yeah, that's silly. um I think that is also just pointing to, which is something we'll get to later when we talk about Summer Game Fest, a future of
00:09:47
Speaker
games being where you want to play them. The fact that we're getting a first-party Sony Horizon game that is going to also launch on PC and Switch this fall I think is ah there's proof in the pudding there that um you know and between that and between Microsoft obviously opening the floodgates for some of their first-party games that ah unless you're Nintendo I guess nothing is sacred with where you put a game but even Nintendo maybe you know get to a point where they're like you can have this but tunes two mario start display and just go on all consoles It would do really well. casey as ah As Johnny Smash, would you be fine with Smash being everywhere?
00:10:26
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Um, yes, but
Nintendo's Strategy and Elden Ring Discussion
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that's never gonna happen. Like, I thought there was like a negative, but, but the like it's just, yeah, this is not gonna happen. Like for, for smash to be, for something like smash to be everywhere. Same thing with Splatoon, Nintendo would need to let go of the reins of their internet infrastructure. And like, that's partly the reason why it's always so bad. is because they want to have full control over it. No, you know what they want to do with the mod stuff in the Super Smash Bros? Imagine needing your Nintendo friend codes on a Steam game. ah If the PSN thing for L-divers caused such a stir, could you imagine? ah Will and Froz are having an issue with just getting their stuff together on a multiverse last night.
00:11:14
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Yeah, maybe maybe those spect or character fighters are just ah hard to hard to put online. They're too busy trying to protect your kids. You know what? They're doing a great job. No kid has died since since since the release of the n NES in 1985. Zero. Thanks, Nintendo. That is that Project M still around that big mod for Smash Brothers Brawl? I'm pretty sure. and I mean, they can't shut it down. It's it's a modded thing, like whoever owns the disk and and a we ah people. I remember thought I remember something about people wanting to use it in like tournaments. And then it was like, fuck, no, I think that's when money starts getting involved. That's when like the lawyers like they even shut down like the legitimate ones for the most part. So like up like over a certain ah threshold in terms of cash prizes. You cannot have it unless it's sanctioned by Nintendo and Nintendo is only sanctioned like one.
00:12:08
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but tournament organizer, and it's based on all these like dumb rules that none of the people who do tournaments want to abide by. So it's like it's kind of a wash. Old Hunter in the chat said, can you imagine PC Smash players using crazy keyboard shortcuts to annoy everyone? The idea of playing a Nintendo game with mouse and keyboard makes me sick. mayor sweet it i I want someone to do that, just so we all know that it's a dumb idea. Like just. called No, I mean, i yeah, you can you can currently do it now. Like there's a mod or a hack or whatever for people who play Smash like ah like I have a friend who plays Smash on a steam deck, but like he didn't. But like it's it's siloed off, right? That's their own thing. Like those people play against each other. They don't play through a couple of melee campaigns on the steam deck was great.
00:12:58
Speaker
Yeah. Makes sense. Yeah. You know what? Put me in the, uh, fuck. What was the name of the, what was the name of the, uh, the, uh, the, what was the name of the story mode in, uh, the subspace emissary subspace emissary? Just put me in there for the rest of my life. Uh, Nick, we got to get you into the nightmare realm. just great grab all What a terrible idea for anything. It was great. i Speaking of terrible ideas, I went back to Elden Ring last night. And let me tell you, I do not remember being in that world, which is funny because we without going into spoilers, we are doing the Dark Souls thing. And so I just spent quite a bit of time in Dark Souls. um But then going back to Elden Ring to prepare for a Shadow of the Urgentree, I was like,
00:13:38
Speaker
What is there so much like you? Did you leave off of an unfinished ah playthrough or? but Yeah, so I have. Yeah, playthroughs. I finished the game once and then I started a new playthrough and then I got pretty far. I got all the way to the ah crumbling farm Azula. It turned out I forgot where I was, but I was like level 110 and I was right at the gate for ah the ah was named Malekith, the the boss that ends a Crumbling Farm Azula. And so I got there. And so I was like, Oh, nice. Okay, I'm i'm a ways into the game. I haven't beat Moog yet. So I'm gonna have to go do that in this save file. ah But when I just started to play the game, I was just sitting there and for honestly, like, two minutes, I was like, how do I get my horse? I was like, is there a button? Is he just here? look what And then someone was like, there's an item. And I'm like, no, there's not an item for the horse. And I had to go to my menu. I'm like, fuck, there is an item for the horse. There's got to be like hot tea or whatever, right? It is insane. And I'm 60 hours into the second playthrough after 100 hour first playthrough. So 160 hours into a game two years ago, I get in there. And I'm like, this is the first time I've ever played this.
00:14:45
Speaker
I don't know how to do anything. I don't know how to dodge. Like, can you guys go back to something after two years and and like, how long does it take you to pick it back up? I only played for a few minutes, so I think I'll be fine once I... Yeah, if you if you give it some time, I do think it'll kick back in because the worst I did that for was Sekiro, where I i left for like upwards of like eight to ten months. That has to be the worst one to do that to, right? And it was doubly bad because when I went back, I'd forgotten the a core mechanic of when you beat a boss, you can basically use its whatever to like power up. And so I just fought like three, four bosses straight without ever powering myself up guess getting stronger. I'm not sure why I'm not. So like that was rough. But like I got like clearly I got the hang of it after a while without having to start over again. But like I have not finished Eldering yet. And like I am just outside of of the Melania fight, I think.
00:15:36
Speaker
Like I've not run into Melania yet, but I'm in that, I'm in that Heilig tree area where I know she's the boss. So when I do decide to go back, that's what's waiting for me. I ended my stream last night right when Frost and Willard were beginning and I said, all right, this is, I ended at Melania and I said, I'm going to fight Melania. If I beat her, I'm going to stream for 12 hours straight. oh No, i I think I said, if I hit her, I'm going to stream for 12 hours straight. And if not, I'm going to throw it over to them. I tried to summon meteors and she just killed me and won it. i was like well zi go i'm going to bed fun watching multi versus guys
00:16:12
Speaker
um Like Nick, where are you? Obviously you put a ton of time into the first game. you You love it. Are you like, are you prepping for this DLC? What are you doing? I've been planning to, and then I loaded up another game that I'll talk about later. Now I'm like, I'll get to it when I get to it. You're not going to be there for the convo? Oh my God, the best. Well, no, no, no, no, no. I'll be there. I'll be there for the convo. I don't need to start holding playthrough, though. You wouldn't need to, like, have beaten the game to start the Western game, do you? I already beat Mog, so I have a character that's endgame.
00:16:45
Speaker
ah Did you beat the game though? Because if you did, it you restarted the game. I didn't think about that game. I shouldn't be trying to finish this game before the DLC comes out. That's why I keep talking. like This is the weirdest game because there is one save. And if you beat the game, you're boned. And not only do you have to replay it, but the DLC is going to be harder for you because you're on New Game Plus. So i'm in ah I'm in a great position then because I've not finished it. I have killed Moog. I just ran into him at some point randomly, throw up my playthrough. I remember the the Lord of Blood or whatever. good So I can just I can just fuck off from the halo tree and just go find that man. I guess Yeah, if you if you beat Moog and you got to the egg with the arm and we know it's the egg in the arm They keep bringing that all up. They brought to IGN live. They keep bringing this egg and they're like you you sweaty boy You could touch the egg with the arm, you know, that's where we're gonna be entering. I don't want to play the godskin duo again
00:17:36
Speaker
They're not that bad. They are. They're so bad. They're the cilantro of Dark Souls bosses because to folks like Nick and I, we are like, yeah, that tastes like soap. And to like you and Jack, they're like, what do you what's wrong with you? I think. I think. I ran into this with one of my friends who, as we were like comparing our playthroughs through Elden Ring, a lot of the bosses are very build-specific. Like, if the way you play can inform how bad a boss is for you. Yeah. And and I might have just gotten lucky there, because I i i do wield Katanas, I think, on this build, if I remember correctly. That's probably a good one. That's probably a good one.
00:18:12
Speaker
I actually do the new builds. Can you use those at the start of the game? Because I kind of want to do that martial arts build that you're getting with the DLC. So yeah, that's going to be interesting. but why do you ask if you have to you know But like, I don't know if those might just be weapons you find those might be while you're playing through it. Right. and In the DLC. So you might end my do this find You need to find a big bong rip. ah But yeah, this also came in a a streamer named Kaa Carnage. I've seen his name a bunch. it His name Kaa, C-E-O-H-H, Kaa Carnage. ah
00:18:50
Speaker
ah dug into These are just Steam achievements, but ah ah only one third, a little over 33% of people who ah play Eldering on PC have gotten the achievement for beating Moog, for doing the thing that ostensibly you need to do in order to um access the DLC, we assume. ah And so if you extrapolate that to consoles and to the number of people who've purchased this game They just announced a 25 million units of the game has shift has shipped which means only 8 million of the 25 million people are prepared for this DLC and so I'm wondering like
00:19:30
Speaker
This isn't their first rodeo with DLC, obviously. And they're not their first rodeo with DLC that is sort of arcane to enter. Dark Souls 1 famously had a very, like, I don't remember how any of us found out how to enter it other than them telling us. I was like you gotta do this and this then you gotta go in the back corner of the lake You gotta fight the rock monster and then you gotta to let the hand pull you through I'm just what this game is so much more popular than the previous games I think so many more normies play this game Like I know normies who play this game like are they gonna be like what I bought the DLC and I can't just click it from the menu I have to like yeah, and I hope yeah 100% Yeah, absolutely cuz that's cool It's cool that you gotta play the game to get to the expansion. Natural filtering. ah no one No one is better at that then. There's a lot of people who will just never get to it, right? They'll they'll be like, all right, I bought it. um I have to play the game over again. And then before they reach where they need to reach, they just give up. They're like, fuck this.
00:20:28
Speaker
Also, that's like old off the beaten path. You could so easily just not go down there. Like that is not a place you need to go to. It's not a common thing to do. So old times does that. But the whole game is stupid obscure like that. That's what makes it so good. It's just discovery every single way. That's why I love the game. Every single corner you go into, it's like, oh, this, oh, this, oh, that. Oh, yeah. And I think that is the whole dungeon. I haven't even done yet. I didn't even realize I didn't even ever went and did the the fire dungeon. ah You never accepted your invitation. I'd go. and least never fell war Oh, like that that volcano man. Yeah, I got the invitation. I just never went below it. Yeah, that is it is like it from soft games almost do feel like that like hardcore restaurant in your town where it's like
00:21:21
Speaker
Oh, no, no, no, don't go there if you're not used to like eating like this is like the real Thai restaurant. This is where they're going to like fuck you up. Like they're going to they're going to they're going to put the spice in your food. So like, just go there. There's plenty of like Thai restaurants in the city. But just know if you're going to go here, you might have a stomachache after. You need you need to be prepared for this. Like, yeah, don't don't go in as a tourist. Go in with some friends who know what they're doing. We're going to lead you by the hand. You got cheesecake factories for you. And they're let me tell you, they got rope they got columns everywhere. They're wonderful. That's ah what microphone if I go to chow. I think they hand you that button. They're like, what do I do with this? Well, you flip it over when you're done. Oh, we're going to slice meat at your table until you literally die in our restaurant. drag your bio what I'm ready to die that way. But prepare it to die. The last estimate time I went there, like my my cousin and I were were like, we were just full. And then this guy walks up with like these lamb chops. We'd already flipped over our buns and you kind of stand stand there and look at us and really.
00:22:20
Speaker
All right. That's right. You go there, where you go jeans with ah cargo pockets on the side. They get brings so many little, there's so many little meats home with you. They put Ziploc bags in those pockets light them with with heavy Ziploc bags. You can drop as many meats as you want. there Why are dogs chasing you out the door? No reason, don't worry about it. All right, going over a couple of super chats that came in during that. And thank you to everyone who's who's watching live on on YouTube now, also to everyone who's watching later on Avad or listening. We appreciate y'all.
00:22:57
Speaker
ah But remember Superchats, Patreon merch, all that stuff helps keep the lights on here. And we appreciate it, such as Elise T with a $10 dono going back to Nintendo. Nah, Nintendo just said no to Samus in Fortnite because Epic wouldn't agree to have her exclusive to Switch. Nintendo will never put a whole first party game on another platform. They've done mobile. Yeah, I guess they don't consider mobile like a competitor platform.
Nintendo Games on Other Platforms?
00:23:26
Speaker
right like it's It's kind of its own separate thing. I would never say never. like They've finally gotten over the hump with having their properties made into movies after being ah burned, I guess, in the 90s. They're seemingly opening the doors again to that. so I don't know. I would never say never.
00:23:48
Speaker
Do you think we will ever on this podcast talk about a Nintendo game, a first party Nintendo game coming to Xbox or PlayStation? if basic say If they do some big live service multiplayer game, yes.
00:24:01
Speaker
Live service feels so antithetical to like Nintendo's like mantra, like they don't need to be so as massive shake up. They're still charging $60 for Donkey Kong Tropical Freeze. It's not live though. but word functional It's worse than live. It's a different kind of bad. like i'll say I'll give you that. Also, if you buy the $100 Nintendo Pass, you get three games for the price. That is the worst. That is like the worst Stockholm syndrome I have with a company is being like, do you know this? And then it's like, because that no hostage in the yeah, that kind of makes it a better deal than what they usually offer. But it's still a pretty bad deal. Listen, he was robbing the bank. He held the gun to my head, but he brought me a glass of water. So it's very nice of this rob to do that. Rafael, thank you so much for the donor. I've played most SDS games on keyboard via emulation and got arthritis to prove it.
00:25:00
Speaker
Yeah, Gundam Elder's Endless Waltz game because that was a ROM hack back on keyboards. It was back when it was like controllers were real pain in the ass. It was like, oh, you didn't start the PC and have your controller plugged in and go through the driver. So you're not using your controller now. What are you what are you talking about? I mean, I did in the shop class, so there were there was no controller option. It's all I mean, it's kind of like an arcade like, right. Like you banged the buttons in front of you like this anyway. So checks out. Yeah. classic endless walt
00:25:32
Speaker
ah shout to ze marques and za hes what a man and periods excellent
00:25:39
Speaker
joel rap the two euro dodo Shout out to Spilled, a cute indie game on Steam. ah We saw Spilled during one of the showcases. that was ah It's this sort of isometric game where you play as like a boat in in during on these bodies of water that need cleaning. I believe it's actually developed, like the the creative director is a woman who was, she was a fan of games, but her main job was like being an environmentalist. This seems like this is one of our themes which I don't know if we're gonna be talking about in our main section, but um It seems like there's almost a an overriding theme of like environmentalism and like hey The planet is being ruined on a daily basis and maybe we should do something about it. We're seeing that in certain games Yeah, let's play games instead of actually fixing the world he
00:26:27
Speaker
I mean, yeah it's awareness. Awareness is a key factor. Awareness, Nick. You sound like one of our commenters. But not like one of our good ones, like Beastmarch. Thank you so much, Beastmarch, for the $2. I don't know. You can beat the game, but just don't go into New Game Plus. But I mean, that's like... If you beat the game, you go to New Game Plus. You die in the game, you die in real life. No, I think there's like a buffer. You could beat the game without. There is a buffer. But nobody but but nobody knew how this DLC was going to work, so. Well, we still don't. the The trick would be if they were like, oh, no, you can only access a New Game Plus five. Fuck. That would be. Would that be a bridge too far for us? Yeah, I'm not fighting. Yeah. God's going to do five more times. That's going to quit Topo. That's not five. That's five? Maybe five.
00:27:15
Speaker
ab but and oh quin tupo Oh, you said duo, and I tried to replace duo with the the five version of it. It's fine, Nick. The five version, were you trying to say five in like Spanish? No, Latin. Quintuple, that's all Latin. You're Latin.
00:27:36
Speaker
I mean, honestly, the root of Polish is probably Latin, so there you go. Abdell Corrala is taking so much for a don't know. Hey guys, love your shows. Has there been an official Dark Souls number one in second wind or we have?
Audience Engagement and Elden Ring Preparation
00:27:50
Speaker
Have we just agreed that Jack is the best at those games as an is there an official best person at Dark Souls at second wind? Great question, Abdell. We're going to plead the fifth right now, possibly because a project that is in the works. that we've probably hinted at on various things, and maybe you've literally heard the core of during our celebration stream a few weeks ago, but we'll know who it is. Yeah, we'll just leave it there. Sure. And I guess that's not the official, but we'll know. Yeah, it is not official, because I'm so good, I'm not taking part.
00:28:28
Speaker
You know what that sounds like? A little bitch move. Dool wielding katanas. Damn weaves are fucking everywhere these days. and What would you can do about it? Nothing because we'll cut you. Katanas. got two candadas What are you gonna do you can even you can say something the first one you can't say anything the second one I can't believe you didn't participate in it Nick No, I can't believe I was busy. sounds like youre I was also busy Oh, it's a first off. Oh, it's a busy second it off. Nick. You're just like I put 75 hours in the avatar from tears of Pandora and let me like for real pointers Oh Sorry bitch it's coming new year with a twenty dollars donno No comment, thank you so much so nobody sure we really appreciate you
00:29:09
Speaker
And fungus finder with a $2 don't know. Thank you so much fungus finder. So it's only okay to mix your meats in a pocket No, it's fine. If each pocket has a different meat so you could put a lamb chop down pocket you have I said it was gonna be your cargo services would be jinkos with cargo pockets. Yeah the official the official Pants of the Vietnam War also just learn how to sew add more pockets. It's not how it's not that hard Hogwarts all the different keys in his vest Johnny pockets Yeah, Johnny pocket's my favorite Harry Potter character. Yeah, is that a real Harry Potter character? I don't know probably jas buys him from JK Rowling so I'd have to feel bad about liking that emotion. Solider by the five dollar don't know as well. Thank you so much. This whole conversation reminds me I need to put some time on Elden Ring before the DLC. That's part of what we want to do. This is like a
00:30:00
Speaker
This is like one of those men of a certain age get your prostate checked, but it is Elden Ring fans of a certain age away from the game. Just check it on your save file. Make sure everything's fine if you want to play this DLC. I don't want you guys like loading up the game. That was like the classic thing of you hear horror stories in a digital world of parents gifting a console to a kid and then they open it on Christmas and then there's like server maintenance or something in the morning they can't even play it. You just got to worry a little bit. You got to put email addresses in and add a credit card. like Yeah. Your mom is not going to do that shit. He gets just playing Hexic while Grandpa's sleeping and Uncle Joe is saying something racist. You know, he's got his Hexic. Do you guys want to get to the main topic? Speaking of Hexic. Hexic's really good, by the way. Do you guys remember Hexic? Yeah. Where'd it go? why Why didn't we get a Hexic 2?
00:30:50
Speaker
Because we did get a hex. We did our hex hex hex hex. Oh, is that the shooter or the puzzle? No, it was the the puzzle. Also, yeah, I can't reload. Tie in with. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We got a hexic too. I think it got canceled because of woke. the I think those hexagons weren't curvy enough. We get hex two right now on the Xbox. For why are we talking about it as a society? Because it's not free anymore. Yeah. There is a Hexic 2. Yeah, I remember that. I thought we're not doing full playthroughs in Hexic 2. Hexic 2 game. I didn't even get a Hexic 3. You imagine. I played way too much Hexic.
00:31:30
Speaker
Yeah, this came out on 360 even. It wasn't either much later. To clarify to everyone, Hexen is the first person shooter that's like dark magic that Phil Spencer wears shirts of, but we don't get anything from. I believe that was Raven software. Shout out to Raven, Madison's finest. And then Hexic was a little jewel-based puzzle game that came preloaded on the Xbox 360. So if you bought a 360, you got your own little Hexic. Uh, before we move on to our, uh, main story, Dr. Theo with a $5 don't know. Thank you so much, Dr. Theo persona six. We'll have the characters summon their personas by shotgunning a beer and then crushing the can to their head. Let me funny. I would love to see that just to see. that world back which one story Oh my God. yeah they funny They need to make like an American persona in like. but hillgily for soda Yeah. You just shotgun a beer darts of beer, beer, bong beer bongga beer
00:32:29
Speaker
your bongo beer. That's my beer. Bongo beer. That's a game game title, right? and I'd play the wrong beer. Um, okay. Our main topic, getting to it now. No more goofs. Uh, summer game fest. We want, we want to break down, uh, what we think are, uh, the winners and the losers of summer game fest. Like I mentioned earlier, we're not just talking about individual. We're not talking about people. We're not ah talking really talking about games. We're not talking about that. We're talking about more like concepts. what What concepts are winners or losers? what What trends do we see coming in? What trends do we see losing momentum? Which companies feel like they they're better off than they were a week ago? Which ones feel like they're better or worse? let's so we'll do We'll do round robins. We'll each will each name ah a winner. We'll each name a loser. Each name a winner. And then four hours later, we'll be done. I'll start off with one of my winners. And it is
3D Platformer Resurgence
00:33:20
Speaker
going to be the genre of the colorful 3D platformer. And let me tell you, it's back.
00:33:25
Speaker
It's back. People were like, oh no, it's gone. It's gone. It's only a Mario game every five years or indies. That is not true. And you know who's carrying the torch? Tony. I mean, how many do they have you to to declare that it's back? yeah are These two games this fall are colorful, 3D, family-friendly action platforms. In Astrobot, which I'm putting my stamp down, is going to be Game of the Year this year. And ah Lego Horizon, which looks delightful because it's taking Horizon, which I don't care about, and distilling it into a very nice seven-hour little adventure that looks charming and funny.
00:34:03
Speaker
And so that's where you you put all your your bags and the a hollow night being at the showcase so i'm taking you with a grain of salt right now. Uh, the, the problem is Hollow Knight, I can't will Hollow Knight to be there. I could just be stubborn and say that, uh, as she wants to give it a year, make myself right on this one. Um, and then, uh, there was also games like project tides, which is the, uh, follow up from the demon turf folks, which looked like the first game heavily inspired by, uh,
00:34:37
Speaker
a Mario 3D World Bowser's Fury, which is that game that I keep thinking Nintendo's next 3D Mario game, which will probably be announced within the next six months when they show the Switch 2, that's going to be the prototype of it. And so it was really cool to see Project Tides because I was like, oh, finally someone is inspired by this incredible game that came out a few years ago. And then it's not 2D, well, it's 2 and a half T, Tomba coming back. early August. And that's a, that's a re remaster. Okay. Limited, limited run, uh, who actually announced they're doing a showcase in like a week, uh, are, are, they're like the champions of sort of ah carrying the flags of those, those old games and and bringing them back. So excited for all those. So colorful three platformers. Congrats. I mean, they're they're also remastering, uh, Yuka. Yeah, I was going to say, Oh, I was going to call it Yuka relayed me, but yeah, you can call it whichever one you want. Dex is coming back.
00:35:33
Speaker
Do we need guys to come back? No, but he's coming back. He's coming to the party. He wasn't invited, but he's still coming to the party. He's crashing the party. That's one of my favorite 3D colorful platforms, or one of my favorite genres of all time. So I'm very excited to see that coming back, even though I'll circle back around to one of the things that I consider an L. So Nick, what's a W for you? Minus games getting back to being in scope. a lot, one of the trends that I really saw in the previews, maybe not the showcases, but the previews are like Star Wars outlaws can be finished in 30 hours, Assassin's Creed shadows, size of origins and and much more focused.
00:36:15
Speaker
ah yeah yeah You know, a lot of the avowed is in a major open world game. It's set in zones. Dragon Age yes elgar is set in zones. It's not a big open world again. So it really seems like developers are starting to get back to focusing on quality over quantity, which is great. oh Has there been so many bloated open worlds with so much useless stuff in it? i I don't need to explore an endless 80 kilometer world again. I just want good crafted experiences with cool handcrafted locations. Memorable set pieces and moments, so... Yeah, Dragon, like, ne that everything that I read in the previews for Dragon Age of Elgar, because the the gameplay trailer looked cool, it didn't really show me much of the what the game was really gonna be.
00:37:01
Speaker
so from the the combat but the previews sold me on at it right away is like oh this is much more like origins into where you go to different locations and it's all crafted. like Yes give me that cuz as much as the acquisition i didn't find the exploration all that exciting. Especially um the last two years, we did summer fest Summer Game Fest stuff, especially with stuff like Starfield. I remember us rolling our eyes when they were like, there's a thousand planets. We're like, bah. It just sounded exhausting. Nothing this year made me feel that way. All the AAA stuff announced at Summer Game Fest or Xbox, none of it was like, roll my eyes like, ah it's this fucking thing again. So that's good.
00:37:42
Speaker
Yeah, and I like Xbox's upcoming lineup really doesn't have any major, major open world games in it either, because when you get to see anything really from Sony or Nintendo, but. Boy, yeah, even even Gears of War is going back to very paraded linear levels. Yeah, it seems like it just takes place in that city. I said, yeah, it's cool. Give me a Gears of the City. Cool. Casey, what's a W? Um, for me, it was both Xbox and Sony's, uh, their showcases had a plethora of games that did not seem to focus on that sort of third person over the shoulder cinematic story driven experience. Like these were games that seemed like they at the very least had.
00:38:27
Speaker
Lots of mechanics like like me systems in order to like dive into and mess around with and that they are. Gameplay focus first like yes, some of them still have like big ah budgets and like look gorgeous but like. i I was really feeling like games couldn't get out of their own way in terms of chasing the movie archetype. And we're stuck and we're moving away from focusing on like the thing that makes games games, which is like their interactability. So like, yeah, a lot of the stuff that a lot of money seems to be being thrown at for both Sony and Xbox are games that feel like proper video games. Like however you want to define a video game, sure, I know that there are different kinds, but like just the traditional sense of like, I'm going to be spending a lot of time interacting with this world and and exploring it or like learning mechanics and building up skills and whatnot. And that's really exciting to me. Like there was a lot of stuff that Sony showed and Xbox showed that I feel like, oh, I would totally play that.
00:39:25
Speaker
Yeah, I agree through there. as Even as someone who likes those kind of cinematic games that might be capital E experiences, I um i was really happy to see what felt like a a breath. of of different games that like there was now there was no one overriding theme of oh a couple years ago oh everything's a looter shooter everything's you know everything's a character action game everything's a cinematic thing like it just felt like um even if stuff wasn't hitting with you it was at least spreading out a bunch of different directions which i i just think is good for the industry as a whole yeah like ah even even some of the
00:40:09
Speaker
Like it was on both ends too, like for these bigger publishers, like their big marquee triplet thing, like Eric is showing doom on screen right now. Like that's, that's a big title for Xbox, especially right now with like the way other things are going that we know for a fact is all about gameplay and feel, but then like some, they, they got a was Wu Chang. Fallen feathers. Chang. Yeah, like that got some stage time and it's like we don't know what this is, but like this looks like a. um but Probably like a lies of PS version of Bloodborne, but for Sekiro, perhaps. Yeah, like like just another crack at this style of game.
00:40:47
Speaker
Go at it. Right. Like get like let people know like there's more stuff like this out there on this platform. Yeah. I'm really excited to to see more stuff like that. Like not super big in name, but like very exciting in terms of like gameplay possibilities. Yeah. And you even ah even some games that have sort of, I guess, underwhelmed on presentations have apparently been pretty good hands on. Casey, you like shared a article from Digital Trends. Oh, yeah. ah from kuniungami Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Com joint. Yeah. Capcom joint seems like positive on that. Yeah, like the hands on previous sound like the game is like really solid and it's coming out this year and everything. And so um it's it's cool that we have.
00:41:28
Speaker
You know, while while it doesn't feel like there's one showstopper, it feels like we have something for everyone, which, um, that's going to sound really dumb, but like, I i don't know. I think that's, I think that's really cool. Uh, speaking of it, so do I. Yeah. Cause it feels like no one's left behind that everyone's going to have something to glom onto this year that they're really going to dig, whether it's in the triple A space or the, the indie space. Uh, and speaking of, uh, glomming on the stuff, at least he with the $2 donuts. And how do you all feel about metaphor reef and has you at least. How much time do you have? I many, I have so many feelings. And then after reading the hands-on and saying that it sounds a little, it's like a little bit, ah it's like a little bit harder than Persona. It's not SMT hard, but it's like bringing in some of like the push system of SMT. And let me tell you, I'm just very excited for this metaphor Refant has. You play as the monsters and the enemies are a weird race called humans. Think about that. Think about that. That's what that game is? Think about it. I think there's a real world. I think we're going to the real world in this game.
00:42:28
Speaker
I think we're going to the real world. I think we're going to meet these Metaphor Refentazio folks. And I think it's going to be very scary when we do. All right. What's your next win, Marty? I'll give you my W. It is ah the rise of the strand genre.
Game Showcase Trends
00:42:44
Speaker
Our good friend Hideo Kojima did not make an appearance this year at ah Summer Game Fest. However, he ah his his influence was fought was felt. And I think it's because the strand genre that he created during the pandemic even though the game came out before the pandemic. I think the pandemic helped ah people realize that this thing, this this building connections between characters is something that we need more of in life. And so we're seeing a lot of games that are based on the idea of delivery. Of delivery. People being delivery people, which I love. And I think that part of it might be the isolation of the pandemic, and part of it might have been everyone got a little too greedy with their Uber Eats.
00:43:25
Speaker
the Uber Eats and their Amazon Prime, and so now we're thinking about those folks. There was four specific indie games I saw during the weekend that ah ah stuck out to this. ah One during one of the showcases, a game called Petal Runner, which is very, it's like you are a Pokemon delivery person. in in a world of 8-bit Pokemon, so it looks like a top-down 8-bit Pokemon-like, and you are a delivery person having to deliver these little critters to people. Big fan of that. um Then we also had a game called Tom the Post Girl, which looks like it took sort of delivery peeping Tom spookiness.
00:44:00
Speaker
And so it was like, I believe this was one of the devolver games, but it was the one that had, uh, it had a kind of twist at the end where it had this like dark, it was was a Jess game. We said, we told Jess this was a Jess game and she saw it and she was like, yeah, that that checks out. this that's That's your, that's your version of people coming together. Stalkers. no but soccers's delivered present it's all but it yeah like it's it's it's not It's not that you stalk people, it's how you stalk people. It's not necessarily a positive thing, but it's all about delivering. It might be delivering spookies and creeps and chills. As long as my Uber driver peaks through my door while they're delivering my food, it's okay. ah No, it's not okay. like we're not We're not assigning a value to it. We're just saying it's a theme.
00:44:42
Speaker
yeah Yeah, a game called Hello Again, which it looks like a kind of a cozy top-down island ah open-world game where you are what you are delivering. And then Crescent County, which is a bike courier game. And there's a couple more bike courier games. We had Season last year. We got another one from Annapurna coming next year. ah but But games where you're a bike courier. And i'm i'm um I'm a fan of all this. Don't be scared of any of those links. All those links are fine. All those links are just Steam pages. If anything bad happens when you click that... If anything, noopsie or support massage. So i while Hideo Kojima is busy watching ah several more screenings of Furios, I'm just happy that his influence is spreading throughout the games. Nick, what else? What else have you got? I was really impressed with the ah withholding of endless live service titles this year.
00:45:34
Speaker
At least from the major publishers, I expect Nexon to do live service games, because Nexon, that's what their that's what their game is. yeah But as far as like from Xbox and anybody else really kind of just a few notable ones, there is the one that's kind of looks like Sony had the one big one, Concord Concord. Yeah. And that well that one's a premium game, too, that's only for 40 bucks. But. ah Yeah, the there's a friend versus friends looking game with the card system where yeah you have cards. Obviously, the first to send it, which we've seen a million times from next on. Yeah. Because I remember that. I don't really remember that many else. And also a lot of the publishers it like made it clear like, hey, Dragon Age is no microtransactions. Dragon Age is just a straight up single player game.
00:46:21
Speaker
yeah Yeah, Microsoft doing the same thing for stuff like Fable and Perfect Dark, just you know making sure no one thought no one thought otherwise. Ubisoft, same thing with obviously Star Wars and AC. So yeah, I think that it's i don't think it's not clearly the genre is not dead, but I think the pendulum has sort of shifted to everyone needs to make one of these, to maybe everyone doesn't need one of these. Yeah, well, I think I think it's but we're basically at the time of life service battles where the MMO genre is where there's the big heavy hitters just eventually. Yeah, eventually some middle ground hitters and then, you know, most just not worth investing to. Yeah. Yeah. Especially from the smaller publishers that we're all trying to get their big break with life service stuff and it just didn't go anywhere.
00:47:08
Speaker
Like that you got to you got to have the teams to pump out content at the scale of destiny and Fortnite and Apex Legends and all that to make these things happen. And ah you know, that's why we saw so many layoffs because these publishers tried to build teams to make that stuff. And they're just they couldn't they couldn't keep up. And like, how do you how do you tear people away from war zone? or You tear people away from Apex like these people have been playing these games for years on end now, just like World of Warcraft. And like once they're once they're in, they're in. Yeah. Addix, how do you pull more? Casey, what else do you have in the W category? Is our most recent super chat? Because I can just jump to that. Oh, yeah. Matches up. Yeah, you want to read out? Yeah, at least he with $1.99 donation says, Casey, thoughts on Perfect Dark. Excited, nervous. That was actually my next win, is that we got to see, not just see Perfect Dark for them to remind us that they were still working on it, but to see that there's been progress made.
00:48:05
Speaker
Like it's like it's first person. um it's It's doing sort of that immersive sim esque mission design, which was present in the original game where like there are missions on the map. You can do certain things to either make those missions a little easier. ah You can even I didn't know if they show this off in the in the in the trailer, but like the difficulty is dynamic in that. everything stays the same, except there's more for you to do yeah and in in terms of like missions and whatnot. But like it's just, it's a big map. You have tools at your disposal based on like what it is that you can do and then you handle it. How'd you handle it? Like that's the vibe I got from the trailer, which is what Perfect Dark is. So that made me happy. I do know
00:48:44
Speaker
Outside of that, it didn't look especially impressive. Like, it didn't look like anything, you know, groundbreaking or brand new. But ah that's not what I'm asking for right now. I'm asking for them to just do perfect dark justice because it's been so long since that series, which I love dearly, has been shown any real respect. Yeah, so like as of right now, this looks good. And that is all I can ask for. Yeah, there's some things I like like the the game is and apparently entirely set in Cairo, which would that could be cool, like, like we said with Gears, like it be it could be cool to take a single location and totally explore it throughout the course of a game. And I was chatting on some other streams with with folks like Jobbly, who's a fan of ah Perfect Dark, and said like, oh, this felt too serious. Which when you think back on Perfect Dark, you think of stuff like Elvis the Alien, you think of a laptop gun, you think of the Super Dragon, the Farsight and stuff like that.
00:49:37
Speaker
but And yes, that is part of it, but also that wasn't every level. The game was in time splitters like the first several missions of Perfect Dark are very serious. Yeah, they they do play some situations pretty straight, but like, sure, yeah there's there's the goofy stuff in there as well, which I don't like. yeah we We don't know, I guess, from the trailer, but hopefully that that is maintained because like, yeah, that's part of the identity of those games. That's what separates it from just traditional, you know, Deus Ex or something like that. Right. But um yeah, I thought the, you know, it what it feels like they're confident in it because I think it was their longest first party gameplay, I guess maybe south of midnight, but um they showed a lot of it. So it seems like maybe they they heard a lot of yeah the worries and and the the reports about how there's been a trouble development and wanted to call some of those um
00:50:26
Speaker
call some of those fears. so Yeah. and And unlike some of like something like those earlier stalker gameplay demos, like this looked like gameplay to me. Like this didn't look like a manufactured sort of gameplay experience. It looked like how the game might actually run. Like it had a hook on screen. It had like very video game player like movement and animations. Like yeah this looked playable. So like I am excited. Yeah, absolutely. How are you feeling? You're not a crazy perfect dark fan, Nick. How are you feeling about it? I mean, obviously, like Casey and I are kind of all in from like liking the original game, but. Yeah, no, I think it looks really cool. I kind of consistently said that Xbox's lineup really excites me because it's there's a lot of variety in it, whether, you know, you got your third person shooters, you got your immersive sims, you got your fantasy action games, like as much as I love Sony stuff, like a lot of it kind of blends together at some point with the cinematic action games.
00:51:21
Speaker
Yeah, I just like I like that Xbox, even if we're not graphics to me is like cool, great, but also like I just want varied gameplay experiences and x Xbox 360 used to be really, really good at that. It really did. Yeah, seeing their ah good watching their old E3 conferences there, it was crazy for them to go from like here's Fallout 3 to Resi 5, to Halo 3, we dropped Nyada, to yeah, to some early Kinect games, like even if they weren't winning. um Yeah, cool stuff. Yeah, go ahead. I guess going transition is some of the stuff that was less exciting for us. um Basing off, I think we all agree like Xbox had a pretty good showing, like but the and the general consensus online is like really good, really good to great like showing. And I think um that showed how Sony
00:52:12
Speaker
Again, maybe it's not important. Maybe we're just ah too close to the forest to see the trees kind of thing, but it just seems like Sony's what felt like a half-ass effort the week before. and Again, maybe in a week this will be moot, but Nintendo just not being there. and Again, maybe like there's been reports next week we might get a Nintendo Direct maybe on Tuesday. but like they just felt like an absence. Like it felt like there was a bunch of indies and then there was X-Box. That's what someone did. And Ubisoft, honestly, because they were the the second one. Sure, sure, sure. They had a really good conference. Like, yeah, the stuff they had to show off, like, oh, my God, shadows looks f freaking amazing.
00:52:52
Speaker
yeah I mean, Shadows in Star Wars, I was like, it was very smart of them to bookend would chat it with Star Wars and Shadows because I was like, oh, this is great. And if there's stuff I didn't care about, it was fine. But like, yeah, those two, i those are two of my most anticipated games of the fall. You know, it's kind of a double edged sword because like one Xbox showed off a lot of stuff. A lot of that stuff's going to take a while to to do. Yeah. And I got a we kind of got away from showcases like that because everybody's like, Well it's not going to be over 2 or 3 years I don't want to see it I don't care right but then people are like oh I want things to be excited about and so like the publishers are constantly swinging like pendulum back and forth of like sure we show you stuff too early to show you stuff too so too soon later I mean too late like what what what's the middle ground I think I think Xbox kind of has it right and I'll talk about this in my impact video tomorrow but
00:53:42
Speaker
um We're we're seeing what's coming out this year. We're seeing what's a lot of what's coming out next year. And then some some smaller glimpses of beyond, because I think like Gears of War e-day feels like a 2026 title. So they didn't put a date on it. Same with Perfect Dark, ah which whatever. Fine. At least the Xbox. Like I have a big lineup of things to look forward to. We get so many darker fable fable. I now think Perfect Dark comes out first. I think they will comes out first. They didn't show gameplay for fable. I don't like extended. It's still a little chopped up chopped up. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. But as far as like Sony, Sony goes, they're like, I'm just not like.
00:54:23
Speaker
it And like you said, Marty, like maybe it doesn't it doesn't matter. It probably doesn't matter. Right. But I just don't have the excitement for Sony that I do for Xbox right now. I don't really know what Sony's a roadmap looks like. They keep their cards very close to the chest these days until like they have solidified release dates, which they got a lot of criticism in the past for because they would announce stuff like wild and agent and all this other stuff. And then we never see it again. ah So I don't I don't blame them, but also like on the excitement for an Xbox is kind of blowing them out of the water with like, we know like the next three years of Xbox games right now and some of the stuff we still don't know about.
00:54:59
Speaker
that it's important to know that like, oh, about assuming there's not ah delays about an Indiana Jones and stuff like that are coming this year. So it's important to know that it's not all, we've had some Xbox Showcase where it's like, Oh my God, all of these are next year or beyond. But it's nice to know that these are this year, assuming stuff like South of Midnights going to be early next year. And then yeah, like I said, Fable, Perfect Dark, State of Decay, all that stuff. no Yeah, Casey, anything stand out to you as particularly sort of underwhelming or leave the show in your mouth? Yeah, in in particular.
00:55:32
Speaker
um Jeff's showcase like like the the meat of Summer Game Fest seemed like there wasn't a lot like like Jeff maybe did not get enough from other publishers for his show because they they were holding stuff for their own show. So like he kind of had to scrape and scrap together some stuff. So like I'm not not saying that the stuff that was there was bad, but a good portion of it just did not have a lot to even show. like They were animated trailers, ah CG trailers, and then like the little snippet of a gameplay you did get just didn't look representative of what they were showing off in a lot of cases.
00:56:11
Speaker
So like, real you're real upset about that anime trailer that turned into an RTS. No, actually I saw, I ended up seeing a compilation of some other folks um who yeah had the exact same reaction we did. We're like, they we're getting really hyped for like all that. I'm like, yo, know this looks dope as hell. Like whoever animated this, like Bravo. And then it turns out freaking. top-down mobile RTS. That was so disappointing. yeah and like that that kind of puts like That's kind of the poster boy for like a lot of what was going on throughout the conference. like Not everything was that egregious, but to different um to different levels and degrees, there was a lot of that. wherere like We're looking at a trailer that's telling you that this is going to be a fun, cool game or universe, and like we're not being shown a cool game or universe.
00:56:56
Speaker
So like that's really disappointing. And like last year, Jeff was really big on saying, like oh, we have gameplay here. like We don't want trailers. And it seems like maybe that was an ask that a lot of those publishers and developers found difficult to provide. And like so they didn't even bother this time. So I wonder how he's going to balance that in the future. Yeah. I mean, as far as like the AAA stuff, like Xbox had it all locked into their showcase. I mean, like literally. Yeah. Even stuff that wasn't published by Xbox was in their showcase. so Uh, yeah, I mean, the cynical side of me kind of comes back to like Eric show on the very start of the showcase where he talked about Indies and kind of hooked up Indies. I was like, well, maybe maybe he did that because that's all he had in the showcase this time was like the big indie games. You know, because he hasn't really spoken on Twitter about any layoffs or anything, except if it's a studio, I think he personally cares about. But, uh, yeah, this
00:57:54
Speaker
He I find like he's having a harder and harder time balancing the showcase in games over ads and and Revit and like these CGI trailers and all that and all that stuff. Yeah, from the showcase. But I don't know. i Yeah, this this I think this S.G.F. like it was for his showcase was like the weakest of the ones he's done. It sounds like yeah from reports, uh, from folks who got to do like the hands on stuff in LA, that it was incredible. That like that stuff that he's been working with. I am eight bit, like he's kind of locked down and people I know who've gone there and went to a bunch of E3s were like, this was way better than E3 ever was in terms of like, uh, you know, the small 1% of people who are there. Like getting handson with hands with games and stuff. So press and content creators and stuff like that. Um, so that's cool for them. I would like to see that sort of.
00:58:45
Speaker
reflected elsewhere And maybe that's one of my things is I love how many, and if you watch the any of the indie showcases with us throughout the weekend, how many of the showcases showed a game and then it said the demo is available now or the demo is on Steam Next Fest. And i I know they won't do it because they don't have a lot to gain from it, but I think it'd be really cool to see more AAA developers do that. to you know people are saying oh the astrobot demo is so good or oh the horizon demo is so good or oh this small snippet of the vow or whatever like it would be cool to be able to play if ubisoft were like here's here's a 10 minute mission of star wars outlaws on console pc you can download it like
00:59:25
Speaker
you know, not representative of a final game. It's not an open world thing. It's just here's a a small slice, a little slice. Yeah. Yeah. Um, you know, maybe that's, that's a wishful thinking, but that would just be really, that would be really cool. And I think that would be, oh I mean, stellar, stellar blade did that. And apparently they sold a million really copies because folks, yeah, it feels like you almost need to be backed into a corner or like a smaller thing in order to need to do that. But, You know, you had like Elden Ring had their beta tests. Um, I don't know. It'd be cool to see, uh, cool to see more of that. Yeah. Speaking of being able to play things, I think that was my, my biggest L for a lot of this stuff has really just been, yeah, the CG trailers. Like ah I've even asked developers on Twitter a few times, like what' what's the point of these GG trailers? Like it doesn't represent the game at all. Why are we investing so much money into these things? Like, uh, and even even
01:00:20
Speaker
They're like, Yeah, I mean, it's good for a TV ad to get people like interested to go look something up. But as far as these showcases go, like everybody watching these showcases knows that's not gameplay these days. Like they spend a lot of money on on these things that do nothing for people. ah Yeah. And so like, i you know, with that, the way Xbox is doing things that I don't sound I'm going to sound like a real big Xbox show over the next this today and like my unpack tomorrow. I'm just waiting for those. I mean, give them their flowers. They get beat up a lot because they make a lot of dumb yeah decisions. But. But I think let them have it. i like I like the way they did this showcase, even though we didn't get a ton of gameplay. We got a couple of gameplay demos, so but like the very next day, we got that 26 minute interview and preview of about which showed a lot more of our gameplay uncut for the most part ah in in like their interview format where you got to hear a story from the developer. You got that big deep dive that you wanted out of it.
01:01:14
Speaker
And I feel like every time I remember going back to showcases, unless that demo is like high octane, uncharted to action for eight minutes, nobody wants to watch an eight minute demo. They're like, please move on to the next game. And I think it's really hard for developers to balance that. Like, how do you show up about, you know, in a demo and make it look interesting on a showcase, right? When you have it's an RPG, you got to go sit and talk to people for five minutes and then maybe you get into combat. So you can't, you really can't like Perfect Dark was good because you get to see an action for two minutes. The same thing with South Amendment. You get to see action for a couple of minutes. So yeah, I know that is a good point. It's hard. to It's hard to show off a more extended gameplay loop. Yeah. So I like I like how Xbox is is structuring their stuff and it helps that like they have um I forget her last name, Tina Amini Amini. Yeah. Who was in an editorial and kind of knows
01:02:08
Speaker
the audience for this stuff. And so you have, you know, your your very quick showcases that give you glimpses of this stuff. And then, hey, like three months from now, they're going to have their direct and you get eight to 15 minute like walkthroughs of these games that are coming out this year, like they did earlier this year in January with the directs. The a lot of the folks who are like in charge of production of those live shows and now those post show things are former editorial. So I think that's like you're getting a good The good change is happening because it's people who are on our side who were like, this kind of sucks. This is how they share it. You see, there's stuff like that at Ubisoft too, and a lot of form editorial, which I think is really cool.
01:02:49
Speaker
yeah um You know, uh, the, the, the, my last thing on any showcase, the one that didn't, uh, stick by any rules Devolver, because that was as far as showing games, that was an F as far as, uh, creating a cool little horror movie. That was an A. So I don't know, don I don't know what that is. Devolver is in his own league. Devolver doesn't devolver things and you just got to go with it. Yeah, like honest I don't know. I'm of the mindset now. I've had more time to think about it. I put Devolver on my else list because like I was so on board for their mocking parody version of a games conference.
01:03:28
Speaker
And that story has now just kind of gone off the rails to a point where like i don't I think they've lost the plot, like literally. like This is supposed to be a way to showcase the games you have coming out. And it used to be an interesting meta ah subversive way to do that. This is a different thing now. like This is a ah freaking anthology avant garde television series. that have that is like obligated to show you video games at specific points throughout it. like They're so divorced from each other. I honestly don't remember any of the games they talked about. like I could not remember a single game from the Devolver thing. Anger foot.
01:04:12
Speaker
I mean, I know anger for it because Jesse and I played it forever ago. Was that during that? Yeah, they really stayed during the developers showcase. They showed off the new game from Heart Machine. But yeah, I mean, like, yeah, it's it was a it was a fun gimmick the first time around. And yeah, it's outstate. It's welcome. And I think they got that. Yeah, I don't dislike the thing that they produce. Like I was into whatever that story was. But like as a showcase, like it does not work. Yeah.
01:04:38
Speaker
Yeah. The developer kind of goes through like phases where they have like a really good gimmick for a year or two and then they overdo it and then they do a new gimmick. Disagree. Go harder. Go even harder. Disagree. Like their their booths in like the L.A. parking lot and by the L.A. convention. It's going to be like weird, weird meeting. It gets real weird there. Yeah. um Any any any final thoughts on Summer Game Fest? Anything positive, anything negative, any, any final things to to take away before we chat about it? One that's probably a little bit contentious, uh, because I know like indie devs need the spotlight for their games, ah but there's just too many showcases.
01:05:22
Speaker
i think I think it's spreading the audience is too thin. I think there's too many and people are like just overlooking a lot of it because it's like, why would I, why would I go watch wholesome direct? Why would I go watch, you know, Latin American game showcase? All those much smaller ones definitely felt like after parties versus like destinations in terms of what summer game fest is. I was going to ask even ah like as a closer for this is like, E3 is pretty much dead finally, right? Like there's not any remnant of it coming back at some point or competing with this in the future. Have we as an industry and as fans of get video games, have we accepted the summer Game Fest format? Like is this working for us as an industry, we think right now, or is there like a lot of room to improve the Ubisoft showcase and the Microsoft showcase? Well, Microsoft showcase wasn't even in person. That was pre-recorded.
01:06:13
Speaker
ah I guess the Ubisoft showcase was probably the closest thing we've had, but I think it was just press and developers in there. I don't know who's in there. Yeah, I don't know either. I guess you i know that's how original Ubisoft showcases really. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, just the blue like it's the same room, the same ballroom. Yeah, just having people there. Right. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know. I like i feel like it's too much. It's too disorganized.
Challenges of Indie Game Showcases
01:06:40
Speaker
Still, there's too too many showcases going on. Uh, you know, I don't think like, I don't think like a PC gamer showcase and future game show and I'll let the near be two hours long.
01:06:53
Speaker
yeah are you put on in You know, problem as so many of these companies are trying to get into the event space and cash in on money is what they're doing. Get those advertisers and sponsors to these events. Yeah. and we had You know, folks who especially on Saturday when we did like five indie showcases back to back to back um were like, why are we seeing the same game? multiple times, it's like, well, these showcases don't speak to each other. And a rad looking indie game, like a bis set cross zero or bis x zero um that showed up and about a bunch of them.
01:07:26
Speaker
you know, that had a place in, it's Latin America, so it had a place in Latin America, it's women led, so it had a place in women led, it's a rad looking PCND, so it had a place in PCND, so um it makes sense that these things, but it does almost feel like, what if there was just like, the indie showcase, but then you would be like cutting a bar, and there'd be like, oh, these small games by these two people in Brazil aren't able to make it to a showcase, so I get what you're saying, it's also, I feel like it'd be an easier pull pill to swallow if Nintendo and Sony and, I don't know, EA. Like, it used to be there would be an Xbox show, all three first party showcases, Ubisoft, EA, sometimes Capcom, sometimes Square, and they all used to be in like a five day period. And now it's like, oh, well, PlayStation's a week beforehand and we think Xbox is, or we think Nintendo's coming next week, but maybe it's the end of the month, ah so. And sometimes folks just opt out, like they just don't even, don't make me think.
01:08:26
Speaker
Yeah, my, uh, yeah, my, my, my concern is like the amount of money being spent on this stuff. And I'm curious like what the return is. Cause yeah, like some, some developer, a developer kind of talked about the crazy prices of a showcase, an indie showcase that was charging like 20 grand just being in the showcase. And I was like, what? And then I got a bunch of DMS from developers are like, yeah, some of these prices fucking nuts. I was like, I felt bad thinking about charging a hundred dollars in our showcase. busster No, I think ultimately I think it's good. I think it's different than E3. I think it's good. I think there's absolutely room for improvement. And hopefully it does improve every year.
01:09:05
Speaker
You just give us more demos to play. I think Steam Next Fest is more important than any of those showcases. Yeah, even that is where we're going to improve, though, because that's a whole... That's a full-time job for Frost right now. Going over a couple super chats before we chat about stuff we've been playing. Quintuple A, $2 demo. Thank you so much, Quintuple. Just says, Net4 Refantazio. And let me tell you, I appreciate it. Thank you. That was for this bit of art that Eric mocked up. It's going to be a real, it's going to be a real special game. Is that me?
01:09:40
Speaker
from how did that happen This is incredible. I don't remember doing that, but you know what? You took some of what I would do. CoolKiddo with a $5 dono. Thank you so much, CoolKiddo. Late to the stream, just finished the big catch tackle box demo. It was pretty wonderful and surprisingly complex for a 3D platformer. You know what, we can add that to the colorful 3D platformer list too. I actually, I backed this game on Kickstarter a while ago and they released, I put a link here, a little prologue demo for it.
01:10:11
Speaker
um A few days ago, and this is a game where you you play as like ah ah a frog man But it's a 3d colorful platform and has aesthetics that look like a ps1 dreamcast ps2 kind of thing But ah you have a fishing rod and the fishing rod is like a big thing with your movement and your your attacks like also many the things you're doing involve this fishing rod a little bit like um if you guys played pennies big breakaway a a couple of months ago. yeah how like that its It's movement was so centered around that yo-yo. Yo-yo based? Sure. Yeah. It's where it feels like the same thing with the with the fishing rod. And so it feels very um like high skill ceiling, 3D platforming. And again, nice nice of them to you know release this prologue demo that folks can play and sort of put the game on the radar slash let folks who back didn't know that, oh, we're making progress. So good stuff there, cool kiddo.
01:11:03
Speaker
And then I'll be Steve. Thank you so much for another $2 donut. Have you played the Alan Wake 2 Night Springs yet? I still haven't played Alan Wake 2 normal. i a badd person you play the dlc casey I know finished the game. Yeah, I finished Alan Wake. I'm not big on like it's not often I go and grab DLC like in general. um So i I don't think I'm compelled enough to jump back into Alan Wake's DLC, especially since these are kind of what if scenarios and not core story beats as far as I understand it.
01:11:34
Speaker
Yeah, I liked the game. I didn't love it enough to go back. Oh, I'm absolutely like ah everything I saw from these trailers. I'm like, Oh, this is absolutely my shit. I just need to say maybe I'll be in summer summer of remedy. But I gotta go back. I gotta go back to think I don't have to go further than quantum break. I think I'll start a quantum break. And then do Alan, wait, no, cause I don't think you can start a quantum ao wake one quarter break, replay control on all the DLC, Alan, wait to all the DLC, drink coffee with Sam Lake. Boom. Damn. You don't need to do this. You you do this. I don't know what. else Also, I think you skipped the game like that. I think there's another game involved in America. Oh, there's that. But then also the Max Payne's.
01:12:17
Speaker
Oh no, I have to go back to max pay. Yeah, you do. If you're going to. You got to play crossfire. No, that's a remedy game. You go play crossfire campaign. No, don't make me. I got through one mission of that. That's so bad. At least with another two dollar don't know I think you at least dredge DLC grab you I don't think I even played the dredge DLC either I'm waiting a little I've not even played regular dredge. Oh, you should play regular dredge. I should I know I'm sorry I'm excited to They announced the second set cuz I haven't played the first DLC the ice DLC and then they announced this weird oil rig DLC So once that comes out, I think I'll do a full dredge replay looks very good. I'm very excited dredge is great. I What was that noise? Was that a no? Was that a no to Dredge? I didn't even hear the noise. Oh, I'm just hearing Dredge noises. That's fine. And then Tsunami Dushir, where the $5 don't know. Did you guys see the Capcom voters result yesterday? Capcom fans are craving a new dino crisis. Tsunami Dushir, I agree.
01:13:22
Speaker
and maybe there could be some sort of archival series coming soon to second wind that could cover a game like Dino Crisis and games like Mega Man Legends and other games. This should just be an entire Capcom series, right? Capcom loves to do this, just leave our amazing games in the trash can. You know what, here's my plan for picking Capcom. Just cancel Monster Hunter, put that in the garbage. No, no, we don't have to do it. We don't have to do all that. Bring back all those series. Go watch Playing Monster Hunter as you look at the sales numbers and you're like, oh, everyone's playing Monster Hunter. No one played any of those old games. I mean, what what is Capcom releasing today that no one is playing?
01:13:58
Speaker
Exo primal like is that it's a primal and that people like that game. couldn Can we suit me? I mean, it's not out yet. That's not. Be real. Be real. What are you doing? is is Look, we'll we'll see what happens. Yeah. ah Let's talk about, you know what? We're not going to talk about stuff we can't play because Capcom won't give it to us. Let's talk about stuff we have been playing and watching. Nick, I want to talk about this Avatar thing. What's going on? Oh, boy. I feel like literally on Monday, you were like... Let's keep it out of nowhere. You were like, oh, I don't know about Avatar. I just didn't really get into it. And it was Wednesday and you're now like, oh, I am Navi. And I used the back of my head to make love. I was like, all praise AY. Yeah, no, I've like tried to get
01:14:43
Speaker
ive Tried to get into that game like three or four different times. Like the world is incredible to look at and everything. I just never clicked with the combat or gameplay. um But then I gave it another shot. ah yeah I guess Tuesday night, I guess I started playing it kind of after the Ubisoft showcase. And it finally hooked me like I i got a couple upgrades. ah I got the flying mount and that really opened the game up really quickly for me. And then the the mission that the game finally clicked for me and I was like, oh, man, I get it. Like I like this game now ah is when you are going to get your I don't know the names of these fucking things, the dragon. you're You're going to mate with your dragon to fly it around. Get it everywhere with it. Yeah, you you you you know, you ride your dragon over the place, but.
01:15:31
Speaker
basically the level design of the game and it's open world kind of like really clicked for me because you literally start at the ground and start climbing up into the sky to get up to the dragon and like you you know if you've watched the movies right you know how they do that whole journey to ah up into the floating mountains There's a second movie. This is this is not ringing any bells. You're doing the first movie. But the first movie, I have not seen the first movie since the year of our lord tells it in the movie. In the movie, he goes to get the dragon thing and he's like literally climbing this.
01:16:07
Speaker
the floating mountains basically that are way up in the sky. OK. And so the game like the just moving through the world of frontiers of Pandora is like a big part of the game. And it really like just keeps you connected with it at all times. And and it finally clicked for me. I was like, this is really nice. That's on that's on theme. Yeah, this is like really a unique open world experience to me, yeah not just being ah climbing. I'm not like walking up a mountain, right? I have to jump. I have to ah carefully navigate these these paths and find my way up. And the game does like a really good job of not giving you
01:16:42
Speaker
Like a a line to follow on the ground like so many games do, right? I guess they use your knobby vision. You see where you got to go and then you got to find a way to get there, whether it's flying there, whether it's climbing a mountain to get there, whether it's climbing up a tree and jumping around to get over there. oh So that that really clicked for me. And then the combat like you're you're a little bitch when you start the game. The the humans will mess your mess your day up with their guns and stuff. ah But the game does a really good job of that. That power of scaling kind of like almost tears of the kingdom. Like, you know, you you see this thing off at a distance. we do you see you see a thing all distance since you're like I want to go take that on. It's like, Oh, nope, I can't. I'm too much of a baby to do it. Yeah. And then play a bit more. You explore a bit more. You find some better gear and then you go in and they're like, okay, now I can beat the crap out of this. So like at first I'm, you know, when you're playing as a novice, you're just.
01:17:37
Speaker
those big mechs with your crappy ass bow, right? And then later on you get a spear that can like literally just jab right through the glass and then you can rip them out of the, out of the machine. And you kind of become like this, like a predator. Nice. Yeah. So the yeah, but like the, the world in general is just incredible to explore. I think it's, it's hitting a itch I've had for like a really good, open world to explore and like, you know, if you like, um, you know, open worlds where you have to go.
01:18:12
Speaker
explore all over to, you know, collect things that increase your health or you have to explore to go get the powers, the the new abilities for your character. You don't just unlock it through a skill tree. like You got to go and find these things. um So that's kind of like that's why I really love open worlds is when they make me go find and do things and not just sit in a menu and shift gear around and shift my points to things. So making you, like you said, connect with the world, which is what the whole thesis of the game was. Yeah. Would I like that? i Yeah. Yeah, the whole. Yeah. Yeah. be We won with nature. I love it. Literally every the thing that's like shocked me is.
01:18:55
Speaker
When we've seen the trailers for the game, they've only shown like Eric shown the trailers. Like I think these like two locations, you see like the floating islands, the opening area and then like the grasslands. And that's like five percent of the world. The only thing I think of what I think of Avatar. Yeah, I'm sorry. I think of those floating little forests, which is fine. They're cool looking. This is a weird, this is gonna be a weird question. So before Avatar came out, everyone was just like, oh, it's just gonna be Far Cry, but in Navi World. It seems like you're vibing with Avatar more than you vibed with Far Cry 6 or something like that. Yeah. is there Do you think there are things Far Cry going forward could learn from an Avatar Frontiers of Pandora?
01:19:36
Speaker
um Put some dragons in there, put some Navi. Well, yeah some people in the chat, like John Lewis saying, like, why does an arrow bring a future helicopter now? Bring down a future helicopter? Well, like, that's the thing. like The combat is actually a bit more deep than it looks like you can't. You first of all, like those helicopters, if something, if they're shooting at you, like you can shoot the guys out of the cockpit, you can shoot them out of the side of the helicopter. ah But like just shooting the helicopter head on with a bow isn't going to do anything. So you start shooting at the engines and then you take it out.
01:20:08
Speaker
So there and makes sense. Yeah, the the they have like big ass arrows. They don't have like your your puny human arrows. Yeah. And the the bots like the the mechs or whatever have like so specific as specific hit points to hit and everything. So it's a bit more tactical than it looks. um Yeah, I loaded up Parker six actually a couple of days ago, too. And I just I did not drive with it at all. And I love I've loved the Far Cry series, but like it's just I don't know. have I guess after Far Cry 5, Far Cry 6 just feels so one note. And i think I think it really just does come down to like, this is a world I want to explore and I want to be in. It's fun to explore. And Far Cry 6 is just Paradise Island. There's nothing interesting about next the next military base.
01:20:55
Speaker
And also, Ubisoft Massive makes good games. like I like the campaigns of The Division. And ah hearing you say that about Avatar Gets makes obviously a different team, but still Massive making Star Wars Outlaws, which I thought had a really good showing. for so Yeah, you know, the story, you know, if you've seen the movies, you know, if you watch the second movie, I don't know if you've seen the stories, Marty, but yeah, the story, the story is OK, too. It's, you know, very one story. But yeah, I mean, every every single place you go in this game is like photo mode worthy. It's incredible.
01:21:28
Speaker
hi James, I'm proud. Yeah, I just like you. You know, if you haven't played a game that feels like next gen to you yet, you need to play frontiers of Pandora to see like a next gen game in action. There you go. You've been watching anything else, playing anything else? Yeah, I've been watching the series that Amazon fails to acknowledge even
TV Series Updates and Excitement
01:21:50
Speaker
exists, I guess, out of range. Hell yeah. Been watching the second season. A little rolling. Yeah, second season really, without spoiling anything, gets and gets a lot deeper into the mystery of it all.
01:22:02
Speaker
you gris that hole they find the bottom of that hole one The end of season one gives you the big revelation that there's time travel involved in season two. like you could can't just tell this out yeah sound like spoilers hold that was a big spoiler you said there's no spoilers and he did a big yeah It's pretty obvious and within the first three episodes. Yeah. I mean, I guess he gets like, he gets like overrun by like a giant like swarm of like old ass fucking bison from like old west. Well, that yeah. Uh, but there's also like the, the stuff eight days later or whatever, but yeah, season two has just been really good. Like if you like lost, I don't really like this.
01:22:44
Speaker
everyone else nippy have you watch our in season two much i get season two yet no but stuff going on apparently delicious and dungeon is wrapped up now so i can go back susan like finit Yeah, there's just uh, there's there's a lot of stuff going on. There's just acolyte. I saw the watches acolyte. Some people are mad. Some people are happy. I want to see what is that there all out or is that weekly? I think it's weekly. I think three episodes are out. Okay, um And then i did I finished my rewatch of House of the Dragon. I'm very excited. I'm very excited for all of these inbred monsters to all work just different shades of this name-caller to all meet their demise. It's going to be great. Very much looking forward to it. TV. It's good. Yeah. I got to catch up on the third episode of The Acolyte tonight, which I haven't paid attention to social media at all because they're having a meltdown over it. And then, whatchamacallit, the first three episodes of The Boys season four drops tonight, too.
01:23:36
Speaker
Right. And then House of the Dragon this Sunday, too. Like, holy shit. So much TV. TV. No, so I was going to I was going to air cookie said next season of The Boys is the last one. I'm very glad. I always
The Mean Girls Musical Review
01:23:50
Speaker
like to see a series I like walk out on its own accord and limp out like a sad old man be forced out or moved to another network. But the anti the anti-corporate show is getting all kinds of spinoffs. it netflix looks Oh, yeah, it's going to get. Yeah. Well, is it V high or whatever? Well, there's another boy spinoff. Well, there's there's ah the Gen V. but Yeah, I know. I know that one exists. Yeah. Yeah. Did you watch it? Oh, I think they're going to turn this into a. I think there's going to be like 10 spinoffs of this. I think they're going to go hard into this. This is like when Amazon's.
01:24:27
Speaker
big boys to milk, just like homeland. It's big boys. I like Genevieve quite a bit. I thought it was pretty good. I just didn't tune in. Oh, just really. Yeah, it was fun. It comes down to the casting of these things to me. What do I need to see a bunch of high schoolers for? I've already watched a grassy. I watched Skins. What are they going to show me? I watched a number 2-1-0. Yeah. Yeah. I have to watch the Skins. I haven't seen any other group of high school kids. For kids do it all. Oh, the euphoria came out. Those kids are wild. And then he was throwing a lot of everything they knew from from skins. I think I think I just think it's endlessly funny that every show is like, yeah, fuck, the corporations are always like the most milk shows to death. Yeah, it's the office. get Yeah, getting the paper. Yeah.
01:25:14
Speaker
but Uh, Casey, what about you? What you been watching? Oh, uh, I, you might've noticed I had a bite size drop ah not that long ago for nine souls. Uh, this is one of the best Metrovanias ever made. Like full stop. Full stop. Like it's fantastic. Complaining on your view that it's not really much. avania because There's not a lot of backtracking. That's just not true. Like ah there's there's not a lot of backtracking. I will agree that. um
01:25:48
Speaker
Good. i believe The game has ah a story and it does lead you in a certain direction, like progression is in a certain order, but there is reason to go back and re-explore other stuff. ah A pain point that I've seen a a couple other people talk about is how the map isn't very helpful to you in terms of exploration, but I mean, the other half of that is that the game is sort of mostly linear and that like you don't need the map to help you go around. You just kind of need to check all the nooks and crannies. And you do have the opportunity later to basically expand that map and make it tell you all the secrets. You just have to do the due diligence of going back to make use of it. And sometimes you don't have to because like you might have already done it while you were there. So like I get that. like It's not the most exploration focused, but that's because it is heavily combat focused.
01:26:39
Speaker
And the mechanics at play in the the fights with regular enemies and especially in the boss fights are absolutely amazing. Like Sekiro, I've said before, has perfect combat. Like to me, that is the best a translation of a sword wielding character having a sword fight with other martial artists. Right. Like it feels how you would think it would feel translated into a controller and ah Nine Souls is that for a more defensive-based martial art. like the The character is essentially using you know like a sci-fi-ish version of Tai Chi. And Tai Chi is a very balanced face-focused martial art. It's not even really used for like aggression or attack. like It's all about defense and redirection and balance and whatnot.
01:27:27
Speaker
And like you have like four different parry options that all come into play based on what your enemy is doing. um They do a good job of telegraphing with like enemy animations as well as like color schemes. like An attack that's like glowing red but then the character's glowing green has to be parried a certain way. An attack that's just red has to be parried a certain way. And the different parries have different inputs. Like one is on the ground, one is on the air. um One is a move where like when you're in the air, you attack downwards and it counts as a parry as well as an attack. And then one is like you hold your parry so that you actually charge up and are stationary in place. So like you see a big wind up coming. You basically have to plant your feet and get ready for it in order to properly time how you deflect it back. And it's so satisfying. Yeah, when you when you're hitting all the different kinds of parry in the middle of this crazy enemy barrage And then you're you you you make that opening and then you start putting your damage in like it' it feels so good It's so fun I'm gonna have to ah hit you up after the podcast because I beat the first boss that you don't really beat and then I like I'm like completely lost already You're you're lost
01:28:34
Speaker
ah yeah it's it could be it can be so There were some sections where it's hard to tell where you're supposed to go because it feels like yeah you can just go wherever it lets you. But there there is a specific path. You'll get like little cutscenes and tidbits of story when you're going the right way. So that's your clue to kind of just keep going there rather than turn around and do something else. The map has like, when after you beat that first boss and you go back to the pavilion, there's like four different lanes you can take. Yeah, so like you'll like you'll come across like dead ends that basically tell you like, hey, here's a path here, but like you really can't get anywhere like that. Yeah. So like I get how that's a little frustrating at first, but especially like what I yeah, this is my problem. I try to play these games before I go to sleep and then I get lost and then I'm like, I'm too tired of this shit. I can't take any level of resistance before bed. So a jumbly, wobbly Hollow Knight Hollow Knight is needlessly
01:29:30
Speaker
getting lost. Well, in how and i I feel like that also serves a purpose. Yeah, like, yeah, you're still supposed to feel lost and alone in that big ass world. You're also just bad at 2D 2D maps. You said that for 3D maps. You've said that. I said 2D. I said you're bad at 2D maps. so You have said that before. That wasn't an insult. Again, this is not me pushing. against You've said those words. gar you I'm excited to play. I'm excited to play down. So so put that put it out on a switch. What are we doing? There's also a really good story. I did. I did like the story. The story. yeah pretty put Yeah. You get like a nice little primer um and then there's lots of layers and like deep conversations between the characters as things go on. And like, even, even all the way towards the end, you're still like learning new and interesting things. Like it's, it's a nice mystery box that always feels like it's progressing as opposed to kind of.
01:30:18
Speaker
um keeping you in the dark but for for an extended period of time. So i I think it's and it looks amazing. The music is great. Like they just they hit every mark that you would want for something like this is one like, i I'm a big. It's not good. And it's adult to like, don't be thrown off like it's it's it's it's got like anthropomorphic characters or whatever in it. It gets grisly like they are dealing with like so pretty dark themes and some pretty dark stuff happens. Like if you're into like like low key like body horror stuff like that stuff is in here too. Like it is firing on all cylinders. It was grisly in the first 20 minutes. It's first. It's grisly in the opening cut scene. Yeah. Yeah. Like they they they don't shy away from it. No. Uh.
01:31:07
Speaker
Another thing you have written down here is the Mean Girls, the musical. Oh, was that. Yeah, I watching while I playing. men ah Kind of. I mean, not while, but like it it happened alongside. um Yeah. Everybody knows Mean Girls is a is a classic ti know to one of Tina Fey's second, is her second, her first magnum opus, the second one being 30 Rock. Yeah. um The musical. I feel like does not translate as well as I would have liked. like I feel like it's a good ass idea of like a true actual good high school musical because high school musical is shit. Let's all admit it. Don't, don't at me. so but that Generation of people. I love Zac Efron. Housekeeping is still garbage. But but yeah, me like the plot of Mean Girls, like the story, the jokes, all of that, it's like retranslated. Like they everything just fell off. And maybe it's nostalgia goggles. But like, honestly, like that first movie is so good that it is hard to compete with that. like And they are competing directly with your memory of that first movie. And they are calling back to your memory of that first movie to get a lot of goodwill thrown its way. But um outside of I think the cast is great.
01:32:21
Speaker
um Not all of them are like great singers or at least like I don't know. It's hard to tell if when they're doing their singing, it's actually the actress or actor versus like, you know, some sort of stand in. But there's some of them like ah maybe two in particular are like really good, strong ass singers. And then a lot of other ones are kind of like just doing their best. um But the the main thing is like the songs don't hit. Yeah, like they don't sound they don't sound like musical songs which like the key to a good musical song is it first you know advancing the story in the plot like telling you kind of what's going on being you know fanciful and playful but also just being a bop like the sort of thing that like you will be find yourself singing over and over like after it's done playing and these songs are a little too production heavy like
01:33:12
Speaker
they They're a little too elaborate. They're like they're trying too hard to be, you know, big production fanfare things that you don't you don't get to just hear a nice melody in the middle of the story beat. So like they kind of get in the way every time they start playing and like you you get away from like the actual plot, which is good. Like it's still the Bean Girls movie and it's still a fun watch. But um yeah, i I was spoiled by Matilda. I'll say that much from. Yeah, from what I heard. So this was. ah So, there was a book, and then Mean Girls is based on the book, and then they made a Broadway musical based on it, and then this is a movie based on the musical. Not like Hamilton, where it's literally filming the musical, it is a right movie. It's a movie that is based on the musical production, yeah. And from what I've heard, the Broadway musical is very good, and yeah, I agree with you with this one, especially compared to Matilda, which I thought was, I thought the the movie version of the Matilda musical. yeah but
01:34:09
Speaker
Matilda,
Director Collaborations and Film Nostalgia
01:34:10
Speaker
like the original movie, is a classic. sure The musical is better than that movie. Like it is so good. And like you can't live in a world that has Matilda the musical and then produce this. I'm sorry. it's It's not fair, but I'm sorry. Yeah. No, it's if you come in the same orbit of something of, Oh, you're, you're harkening back to this movie from 20, 30 years ago. That's like a beloved childhood slash teen classic. Um, yeah, that's a lot. That's it's big shoes to fill when they didn't know.
01:34:42
Speaker
all right Like it's fine. or like it's not It's not terrible, but like like Mean Girls is a high bar and like this this is hanging out somewhere below it. That being said, give Tim Meadows any work he wants in life. He's great. I will tell that to Ridley Scott because we're getting a Gladiator 2 sequel this year. Oh, Gladiator 2. Don't tempt me with a good time. Could you imagine Gladiator 2? Paul Mascow, Denzel. What a movie. This is going to be a great movie. Gladiator 2 is either going to be a Best Picture nominee or it's going to have a four on Rotten Tomatoes. And either way, first day, first day. A bunch of people didn't like his last movie.
01:35:23
Speaker
Napoleon? No. Was that really Scott, too? Yes. I watched that one. Shit. The last duel? for um The last duel. The last duel. Yeah. It's a good movie. Yeah, I seem really cool. I do want to watch that, actually. at The last duel. Yeah. Forgot that was a thing. He's just big. He's just big buds with. ah
01:35:41
Speaker
It was. No, no, no. was's for Was the last duel Ridley Scott or was that Michael Mann? No, that's Ridley Scott. Ridley Scott. I'm getting my fucking 90 year old men good confused. The Irishman. They're all good. That's a. Scrissett, Tom Stanton, Opal, right? Tom's just saying, no, no, no. Chet's in the Napoleon movie was bad, but is it fun? Because I just care if it's why walking is kind of wild out, if I'll be honest. Walking, he's always a joke. He's always a little bit wild out, but sometimes he needs to rain it in a little bit while slightly less. I like non wild. And I like I like the village walking.
01:36:18
Speaker
even though he's got a learning disability in that movie, but he's great in that movie, and he doesn't realize what's going on, and what he does, it's very sad. Y'all ever see The Village M&H timeline? Do you know the twist? I'm not going to ruin in the village. I do know. that I know the twist in the village, but I've not seen the movie all the way through. No, oh yeah that's me. Then I was so excited for that movie as a kid thinking it was going to be terrifying. It was just a weird dumb mystery. I i mean, that's that's why I'm on a nutshell for the village 100 times. I feel that way about Lady in the Water. No, you can't feel that way. really I think Lady in the Water is a good time. yeah It's so fucking stupid.
01:36:56
Speaker
You can't go. Oh my gosh. I've never heard it. I liked it. For some reason I always put the happening. For some reason I always put ah the village and signs at like the same room. And I remember they were like back to back signs, but they were all were higher. Okay. Yeah. Cause he did a six cents unbreakable signs. The village yeah then lost the plot a little bit that we got to avatar signs. Yeah. Yeah. someone yeah Don't make that face. I think that was his, his big breakout was signs. Yeah. He went down for from there. Yeah. That was good walking. That was solid walking as that baseball player who had that bat and then he hit that. Yeah, that he wasn't that. Yeah. Those aliens were allergic to water. They were never going to the water. Like, why did you come here? Like you came to this planet? smart water planet how could this planet it and No one was like, should we check to see what's going on down there? Is it like 90% of what we're allergic to?
01:37:52
Speaker
For someone that made all those, like, mystery political movies, why did they ever give him Avatar? I don't know. I don't know how he got that job. I don't know the thinking behind it. People got debts. Maybe he had a bunch of gambling. Even growing up, I remember that seems like a weird name to put on this movie. yeah The movie, if you watch silently, it is very pretty. This movie put on that in Silent Hill 1. Put it on. Don't listen to anything. Just listen to a cool album or something. You're gonna be like, this is a pretty good movie. Don't put subtitles on. You do. The scripts are bad. feel You don't want the subtitles. I don't know how we go. I think this tangent happened because I brought it up. But did anybody, we're talking about like directors like Ridley Scott and Shyamalan, did anybody watch Peter Jackson's Mortal Engines and like it? I did not watch that movie, no. and I saw it in theaters. Or they're watching. It's like six bucks.
01:38:49
Speaker
It's, no, don't pay money for it. Don't buy it. No, don't buy Mortal Engines. Also, he just produced it. I don't think he directed Mortal Engines. Support the arts. No, I got to fetch it. Well, to be sure he didn't direct it. Peter Jackson's very, aside from that 115 hour. Christian Rivers. What else did Christian Rivers make? Jesus Christ, Moses. she took the recorders of the bible we just that tell because yeah I don't know. Moses would have been the better joke like Moses. OK, no, that completely makes sense. He so he was the director of mortal engines and ah did visual effects for King Kong and Lord of the Rings. Yeah, he was like, ah yeah, he was like a visual. Yeah, visuals guy that made him directed a movie and that never seems to go well for people.
01:39:37
Speaker
I think that's it. It's going fine for Zack Snyder.
Film Reviews and Analysis
01:39:40
Speaker
Yeah, I saw it. Yeah, Zack Snyder. That is that man should just be let him hold the camera and let him not do anything else. and hunt it Let him hold the camera. It's very pretty. Has there ever been like a director team up? Like, you know how, like every now and then, like artists will like do a ah joint album, like watch the throne. or Yeah, yeah. Have any two directors be like, hey, let's. Oh, freaking ah Benicio del Toro and um Robert Rodriguez. Right. They do that. basedally the to Wait, I'm sorry. Did I miss that actor? Yeah. yeah no no Not Tarantino. Guillermo del Toro and Robert Rodriguez. No, am I tripping? I think you're tripping. There are, uh, there are times where they will like split a movie like grind house. Robert Rodriguez directed half of and Quentin Tarantino directed that anthology movies where they'll do this. no I want them, I want them talking to each other.
01:40:34
Speaker
Spielberg and Lucas ostensibly worked on Indiana Jones together. Like Spielberg directed it. Lucas co-wrote it and it was probably like, well, put a little critter there. See, they got they got to both do all the jobs. But every time that happens, you get the brothers making a movie and then they get divorced. And then we get separate Cohen movies and separate separate Wachowskis and separate Wachowskis. Yeah, that's what I think. What do you think would happen if you put like Christopher Nolan and like It went like a Tarantino in a room together. I don't know. Are there are there rules like to drop like a knife in the middle? Well, Tarantino's movies are pretty, pretty straight to the point. I'm no sure they are. host I'm sure they're fans of each other. Chris Reynolds, a big fan of Fast and Furious. They might be finished. Could they make a movie together? No, I don't. I think they're all ego maniacs. They would kill each other each other. Yeah. Let's put them in a box and see what happens.
01:41:30
Speaker
Why do you want them to fight? Just violence. It's that end of podcast violence coming from here.
01:41:36
Speaker
um I want to go over the two movies I watched this week. Good. It was very good. and They're both Netflix movies. They're number one and number two right now on most viewed on Netflix. The first one, highly recommended, Hitman. It is Hit, Spaceman. It is the new new movie from ah Richard Linklider, the director of Before Sunrise, Before Sunset, Scanner Darkly. just a I've seen Scanner Darkly. Yeah, yeah. i Didn't understand it. All-time great director, but it is starring Glenn Powell who ah Tom Cruise has anointed as like the future of Hollywood who if you if you just look up up with the way Peter here, but if you look up Glenn Powell he was in he's gonna star in Twisters later this summer, but he was the sort of the antagonist for a little bit of Pop Gun and then he's been he was in that ah movie with what's her name Sydney Sweeney earlier this year anyway I get why Tom Cruise would say that
01:42:27
Speaker
ah he is this movie is excellent it is super fun and Glenn Powell in this movie by the end of it you'll be like oh yes he is the next he is the future of Hollywood like he was like movie cru plays like he absolutely looks like Tom Cruise he plays like ten different characters or like a character playing different characters throughout this movie and he is so fucking good. It's ah it's a movie about a guy who ah he ah but he like moonlights with the FBI and his job is to pretend he is a hitman to coerce people to try to hire a hitman and then they arrest the people.
01:43:02
Speaker
Yeah, but then he ends up falling for one of the people he's trying to do a sting on and like, and it goes from there. So it's like ostensibly a romantic comedy, but with this sort of stuff. And I absolutely love it. That's a crime, right? like do a lot lots and lots of crime herelura You cannot do that. You can't. can't fall for your your mark. yeah and Also, she was trying to kill her. She's trying to pay you to kill someone. That should be a red flag right at the start. ah So that gets my big thumbs up. It's a very funny first date.
01:43:35
Speaker
sure Like, Oh, how did you two meet? and was one Story story. Um, and, uh, yeah, really great movie. And, uh, Adrian Arahona is the, uh, the female lead in the movie who but is one of those people that I feel like we will know her name soon, but she played, uh, Bix in, uh, and or the female lead in, in and or as well as, uh, she's been like incredible in a lot of like really mid tier to bad movies, like triple frontier six underground and Morbius. And she yeah she's just great, but she's in Morbius, and I was like, well, I don't know how good you can... I don't know if anyone's coming out of Morbius alive here. He's paying for some past transgression. Exactly. ah But then my big... I mean, so was beth smith with Matt Smith was also in Morbius, and he's incredible. Like in House of the Dragon, he's amazing. so i mean But he's also played a huge pervert, so...
01:44:27
Speaker
I think he was, what, in both of them. In both of them. I didn't see the other ones, but how did it house the dragons of pervert, just because he is nice. It doesn't mean he's the only pervert Westeros back then. So I guess I guess that makes it better. I don't know. It was fine. That's what that was the custom back then. Crusader Kings stuff going on there. And then the other movie, my big recommendation, it was the second most watched movie on Netflix and it's called Under Paris. And ah it is a French man who saw Jaws and is like, I want to do this, but I don't want to leave Paris. And so it is a movie about how a bunch of sharks attack Paris. um And it is just Jaws. like It just steals the plot of Jaws, including ah the fact that the mayor of Paris, they're like, listen, the the sharks are in the Seine, the river right now, and we need to close the river, and the mayor of Paris is like, no.
01:45:18
Speaker
We have a triathlon going on right now and that might get us an Olympic bid so we will not close the river. and In fact, we'll put all the men to swim in the river and nothing bad will happen and then the sharks come. ah so it is wow ah it is ah That being said, the movie is the movie's dumb as rocks, but the movie is gorgeously shot. like It is so clearly shot in Paris using 8K cams that it feels like a like a like a travel documentary. And so I was like, oh, I'm in Paris. This is beautiful. ah There's cool sharks, some great gore when the sharks eat the people. And I will not spoil it. The last five minutes of the movie are the most batshit insane ending of a movie I've ever seen.
01:45:59
Speaker
OK, now watch the movie. You need to sit through the credits and get to the end. You're like, that was what this whole movie was about. I'm kind of on board now. soon Yeah, I think I'm going to go have some beers and then come back later. Under Paris. It's great. It's like it's like a solid like 95 minutes. Number two, watch most most watch movie on Netflix. I highly recommend it. um There you go. This is like this is like just not this isn't a knowingly bad movie. This is just a bad move. No, no, no, no. No, it's not like a Sharknado like a gotcha. OK, OK. Oh my god, I turned into a shark. I'm under Paris now. I can't believe it. um But it's also directed by this crazy Frenchman named Xavier Gantz. And his's his previous movie, speaking of Hitman, was Hitman starring Timothy Oliphant based on the game Hitman. And he got kicked off the movie because he put in a cut of it. And they said, it's too violent. It is gnarly violent. They're like, this is like rated X. What have you done? This movie's got like,
01:46:54
Speaker
whole sacks and too much violence. They kicked him off though. They didn't say, Hey, can you reign this in? Like it was so bad. They was like, get what im out of here. You leave immediately. And so he's like, I'm going to come back 15 years later. I'm going to make the gnarliest shark movie you'll ever see. And I will go insane at the end of it. So 10, 10 more under Paris movies. Give me under Tokyo. Give me under New York. I want to see where these sharks are going. That's hilarious. Yeah, it's great. Very pretty. on board I like it.
01:47:22
Speaker
I think that's great. Let's go over some super chats before we leave. Good evening. I also really have to pee, so that's kind of why I like spending a lot. Because I had to pee for like 20 minutes. So now we do share with a five. Oh, I don't know. Thank you so much. So now we do share. Funny side note, going back to Capcom, fans want a new Monster Hunter in the older mainline series. Casey, do you want Monster Hunter to like go back to sort of pre-world, pre-wilds, like simpler handheld times? No? Nope. Absolutely not. And if they do do that, just stick it on a Switch and get it out of my face. Like the the new big budget Monster Hunter was an improvement. Like the old games were good.
01:48:00
Speaker
But they were always, like, they were always scratching at the door of this, right? Like, the open world sort of monster hunting thing is the final, like, destination for that series. um World ah started it by giving you, like, sectioned off, like, kind of big biomes. Wiles, essentially, I haven't confirmed that. Like, I don't think anyone knows for sure. But Wiles looks like it is just an open world. And, like, you just traverse it as one giant, like, continent. and That's fantastic. like I'm super excited to see that. That reminds me. Since you said get it on my face, I remind me of your comment in the back of nine songs about getting medieval stuff out of your face. Oh, the medieval muddy boys. Yeah. And I moderated a comment because somebody was very unhappy with you saying that basically called you a bigot for saying that. and That's that makes sense. But all right.
01:48:53
Speaker
but so king Classic King Arthur Truther. Get that man out of here. I don't need those money little money. I think I saw that comment. Yeah, um yeah they that that argument just doesn't hold water. Like, um this is my opinion. I'm speaking for my preference. I say that in a video. Yeah. Um, we get them on my face, whatever the debt anyways, we don't need them here. Uh, Buka po bogs. Thank you so much for a $10 don't know. Shout out to Marty in the chat. You know, Bupo bug. Shout out to you in the chat as well. And the pattern bike with a $5. Oh, this was, uh, going back. I think Nick, you already answered this, but, uh, any chance for pride Phoenix hoodies with no texts coming back. And this is my chance to get one before that may be in the fall. Is that right? Yeah. They shock her about those hoodies in the fall, teachers in the summer. Oh.
01:49:39
Speaker
There you go. mur yeah Get some air there, buddy. Oh, what happened? Oh, it looked like Seaman. Not Seaman. Not Seaman. I look like the Seaman from Seaman. Yeah. People understand. That's adorable. Thank you. ah We did it, guys. I'm really proud of us. We made the whole end of the show. I turned into a fish only twice. ah Casey, what do you have going on? what should What should folks check out in your neck of the woods? ah Like we just mentioned, ah Nine Souls Review of Bite Size is up on the channel. Check that out if you haven't seen it already. It's good.
01:50:10
Speaker
the both the review and the game. they're all It's all good. um Tomorrow, more DMC with Marty and I. That game is a delight. God, I love it. Oh, good. It's um it's okay Oh, no actually, second stream early. Yeah. 3 p.m. control tomorrow. Right. Yeah. Jack and I will be on stream together ah playing a sponsored game, um which I'm actually a little excited. I'm pretty excited to check out. Like, it looks really cool. It's something I've been asking for from Nintendo that they won't give us. So we'll see how this indie studio is handling the call. um Outside of that, ah wedding streams should be back this Friday. Me, my fiance, and my son will be there playing stuff. I'm thinking maybe we'll give the boy a little kitty big city to play around with. And then like me and Kia will just like goof off with him and and chat and stuff. And that should be a good time. Come under, Paris.
01:50:59
Speaker
smiling No, honestly, I think those switch people when I said that I was going to watch it, I did have him in mind. Like, we'll probably we'll probably watch it together. And I'll see what he thinks of it. It is very silly. It is very silly shark attacks. And there's no like nudity or anything like that. So I think I'm sure yeah he'll be he'll be fine. in um Outside of that, ah like we're we're working towards getting to 60 percent because once we hit that goal, we're going to be doing karaoke. Like it's going to be a demonetized stream that gets nuked from the Internet. But eff it we're going to do karaoke once we hit 60 percent. So help us get there tomorrow. Not tomorrow, Friday. Sorry. um And then Sunday, Super Smash Sunday will be back as well. Wait, it might not be. I might move that Saturday. We'll find out. Follow the Twitter. You'll find out.
01:51:43
Speaker
because I still got to do like ah wedding tour visits and stuff over the weekends and whatnot. So I'm just out and about. Awesome. But that's it for me. Yeah, I'll have a brand new episode of Unpacked out tomorrow, looking over the recent big Xbox moves. It's gonna be the kind of a flip video from the one I did two weeks prior. I'm sure nobody's gonna screenshot that and be like, oh, he can't keep his fingers straight. ah But yeah, that's pretty much about it for now. Frost and I will be back on Friday for Call of Duty. i We'll be starting Call of Duty 2 finally. I'm really excited to do that.
01:52:19
Speaker
And then and you Jesse and Jack will have another sponsored stream Friday at noon as well. Yeah, back to backers. Yeah, some sleep. on other Yeah, who people in might we'll playing the game. That's you've seen ads for this week. My lovely empress. The last time I played a game with political leanings in it like Crusader Kings, it went to very weird places. so And this game with monster girls will definitely not go to any weird places. And Jack and Jesse will be providing voices throughout. Nick is playing and they we have our two thespians. Maybe some tentacle things. No, no tentacle things.
01:52:56
Speaker
ah But yeah, check out it check out all that stuff. Yeah, tune in to all the streams, watch watch all the videos, and yeah, we appreciate it. And we'll we'll be we'll be working on a big Steam Next Fest kind of roundup of our favorite games, our favorite demos that we've we've been contributing to, and Frost and Jesse have been cobbling together. So look out for that in the next few days as well. Excellent. there Some people should keep asking. So I'll address it. And your go says what happened as long as conquest review ah just had some factual things in it that we needed to fix. So we took the review down because it was it was getting my bastard. So just took it down. It's busy. That's all.
01:53:35
Speaker
Uh, perfect. Uh, so for, uh, uh, Nick, for Casey, for Eric, this was Marty. This was Firelink episode number 25. Uh, thank you so much to everyone watching live in YouTube, watching the VOD, uh, listening on your podcast services. Uh, we really appreciate it. Thank you so much. Give it a, give it a thumbs up. Give it a, give it a review on one of the podcast services. You probably do that. Even if you don't like it, give it a review. Just be honest. It's fine. We appreciate it. No, five stars or get out. That's fine. If you listen, we didn't earn five stars yet. We earned like a solid three and F. Thank you all so much. Have a wonderful rest of your Wednesdays and we'll see you all tomorrow. Bye everyone. Bye. Bye.