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S7 E7: Up Late - Expectations Exceeded!
59 Plays6 months ago
Tom, Dan and Pete take a wander through previous games that delivered the goods despite lacklustre trailers that really didn't spark much interest.
Beers reviewed this episode:
- Bacchus Brewing - Toblerale - Barleywine - 14%
- Boatrocker Brewers - Roasty Toasty - Imp. Brown Ale - 9.8%
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Episode Focus
00:00:18
Speaker
And welcome back to another Pixels and Pints Up Late. As you can tell, we're up very late, judging by the sun streaming through most of our windows. But we are here as well. As usual, there is a Peter. Hello. And a Dan. Hello.
00:00:36
Speaker
And tonight this afternoon this morning who knows time is a construct we are going to be focusing on games that we thought exceeded the expectations put out by game play trailers. More focusing on those ones that actually show some gameplay that we think.
00:00:55
Speaker
When we first watch them, probably like, yeah, interested. But when we actually got sat down and play those games, we were like, holy crap, that is my entire persona for the next 48 hours or however long it takes me to play this game. So we're going to go through, we've all kind of picked between two and three trailers to look at, some that we've all played, some that I'm not sure some of them we haven't played. And we're going to dive in. This kind of came out from a
00:01:22
Speaker
chat we were having about some recent trailers that dropped that we were just like that some of us just
00:01:28
Speaker
Yeah, didn't didn't think it's going to deliver. And that spiraled into a deep, dark rabbit hole, as we usually do. Hey, which other games have we done that haven't haven't delivered or over delivered? In this we will be avoiding purposefully. We're not going to be talking about our Red Dead Redemption 2. We're not going to talk about God of War Ragnarok. Games that particularly we've all harped on about in the past, because
00:01:54
Speaker
there to just be us regurgitating the same points that we've done about 18 times. So yeah, we've all gone and picked some games that we haven't really, we may have mentioned in previous episodes, but we haven't really done a little spotlight on. And we're gonna drink some beers while we do it. Well, two of the three, Danny, are you drinking it? No. So Pete and I will be having a beverage, if you will, a little Sunday treat. What do you got? Yeah, that's it. I am gonna talk about RDR2 so you can suck a fat one.
00:02:23
Speaker
Well, good thing I read the notes. Yep. I am well prepared.
Beverage Choices Discussion
00:02:28
Speaker
You can say brought you chapstick, but all right. No, I'm out of chapstick. I do need to go to the shops. Thank you. Put that on the list. What are you drinking? We've got batteries. Tom? I haven't poured mine yet. Have you poured yours? I have. Well, you can go first then. I was just rambling. The head immediately disappeared. I haven't tasted it yet. This is Bacchus Brewing's Tobler Ale.
00:02:52
Speaker
Which is a fourteen point zero percent barley wine. Swiss chocolate barley wine. Fourteen. Fourteen. Correct. Fucking hell. Is that the only one you're sipping on this afternoon or are you going to try and knock back a couple more? We'll see how we go.
00:03:12
Speaker
The only beers I have one beer that is not earmarked for a podcast episode that we're recording shortly. And it's also, I think 12%. So I'm not sure that's a great idea.
00:03:24
Speaker
No fridge fillers these days. No, no. As I mentioned just before, there is zero head retention. It pretty much poured into the glass and instantly just evaporated.
Games with Underwhelming Trailers that Delivered
00:03:40
Speaker
Super sweet.
00:03:43
Speaker
Maybe it's just the way that my brain connects back us brewing beers but. This is it's I mean look there's lots and lots and lots and lots of sweet chocolate in it it's described as Swiss chocolate but it's almost cherry that real. Almost that that beta tartness that you get on the edge of a marin Chino cherry.
00:04:07
Speaker
Unusual, it's not what I expected, as almost an aftertaste, but the actual beer, I mean, it's just like drinking really alcoholic chocolate milk. You can certainly get some of the alcohol burn. It's pretty hard to hide 14%, but it's pretty fucking good.
00:04:26
Speaker
I like that you kind of, I don't know if it was an inadvertent like slur there, as you said that, or it was slipping into that accent, but it really worked. You're like four teams is fucking good. Um, I'm going to give it a four and a half. It's going to be interesting. Maybe it'll, it'll, uh, brighten as it warms up 4.1 standard drinks in a small can. Fuck me. Yep.
00:04:52
Speaker
Well, that's going to need a few more of those, Dan. That's the whole idea of these, uh, these one hour, one hour and 20 minute episodes. Yeah. Cause the, the, the booze doesn't really kick in until after we've stopped. Yeah. Tom. Uh, I am drinking the roasty toasty from, uh, annoyingly can't say it. There you go. Um, roasted toasty from, uh, boat rocker.
00:05:19
Speaker
brewers and distillers, a file, which I believe is a coffee, coffee roaster, uh, infused and barrel aged Imperial brown out. Um, and it is a nice thick. Oh yeah. Um, stout color almost.
00:05:37
Speaker
Almost, but yeah, it's a bit hard because you guys can't see it. It is a beautiful, deep brown. You can kind of see it there with my little light going into it. Yeah, it's not as black as you would think first out. Instantly, first sip, just that barrel-ness, that kind of really intense barrel-aged flavor came straight through. The coffee isn't as pronounced. It's quite rich.
00:06:04
Speaker
Yeah, kind of not what I was expecting. Glass, couple of brownies I've had have been a bit more mellow. This was like a smack in your face of flavor and a bit of like...
00:06:14
Speaker
A bit of boozy burn. It's only 9.8%. Yeah, I ate it in bourbon barrels, which that was, I think, instantly what I tasted there, that bourbon-y-ess, bourbon-ness, rather than the coffee flavor coming through. But it's got a really nice biscuit base. I'm probably, before rating it, I'm just going to sit on it for, it is quite cold out of the fridge, so I'll give it another
00:06:40
Speaker
20 minutes and give it a rating. But yeah, so far so good. Nice. Sorry, what was the ABV? Nine point something? Nine point eight. Nine point eight. It is three standard drinks in this little can. Nice. Hmm. All right. Should we start with our main topic? Let's dive into it. So, I mean, it was Dan's idea.
00:07:07
Speaker
in one of his drug-induced fever dreams of late. He's prescribed drugs, I should state for the record. Yeah. Officer. I just, I just, I just realized that I haven't actually spoken much in the last two weeks or laughed really at all. And even just a couple of little chuckles there were giving me a headache. So we've gone and dropped some Panadols in some water now. So let's see, see how all this rolls out. I need a Furinol stat.
00:07:36
Speaker
Um, okay. Well, do you want to kick us off then? Were you drinking your camomile tea? Sure. It's great. But anyway.
00:07:44
Speaker
Whatever. Um, I don't even know if you two got, you guys have played the games that I put on the list, which is, uh, so two, two games. Don't take me back to Dragon Age origins. Tom just spent a thousand hours fucking. No, that was the acquisition, but I have, I have, I have played origins. Oh, you have played origins. Okay. I didn't, I couldn't remember whether origins. So my two games that I picked, uh, older ones, because watching the older trailers, they were.
00:08:11
Speaker
Dragon Age Origins was quite generic fantasy wise. It didn't, it spoke about the Grey Wardens and the Darkspawn and the whole epic journey that has to be going on. And it showed very little of sort of gameplay, even though it was tagged as a gameplay trailer. It did show that sort of chunk of cinematic, in-game cinematic stuff, not pre-rendered stuff, as well as a little bit of gameplay.
00:08:36
Speaker
was kinda just super generic fantasy sort of stuff you would expect from sort of eighties fantasy movies nothing sort of out of the way and my other one was the original mass effect one and it's original gameplay trailer as well and it was the same thing it was kinda just
00:08:53
Speaker
space-operary, generic space-operary, never really touched on the overall- What do we expect in terms of storyline? Yeah, I mean, even the Mass Effect one said the rogue soldier that threatens the galaxy, and yeah, Mass Effect one is about that, but it isn't in the bigger story. That's kind of the smaller main plot, and I say that in quotation marks.
00:09:20
Speaker
But for me, both these games well and truly exceeded what they set in the trailers. They were generic
00:09:31
Speaker
uninteresting trailers, which yielded wonderful, wonderful games, similar and different in both rights. They're both Bioware games, which is interesting too. But Dragon Age Origins, even though it has a slightly generic plot with the Dragon and the Darkspawn, I can't 100% remember the plot, but the mechanics that they
00:09:57
Speaker
modernized from older RPGs to this kind of one of the first modern, semi open world RPGs that happened in the mid 2010s.
00:10:14
Speaker
Mid 2010s definitely. Mid noughties there somewhere. PS3 era. So the gameplay there, so you pick one of four backstories. I think it's one of four backstories and you play through your tutorial section which takes a couple of hours to get through, sets your story within the world and the gameplay is
00:10:40
Speaker
third-person fantasy exploration but then you end up with a team of
00:10:47
Speaker
three other party members that you can pick from about six or seven total party members. Seven altogether. Yeah. So it's very similar to what we see in boulders, but what boulders gate three just did, you have your campsite that you go to at the end of the day and you interact with your, your other, your other team members. And then you pick your main team to go out and they have tanking classes and magic classes and healing classes and everything like that. And, but primarily the gameplay was third person controlling your character, but then you could,
00:11:16
Speaker
hits base bar, in my case, I don't know what it was on the PlayStation, pause in the middle of any combat scenario, issue orders to the rest of your team, and throw, attack this person, drink potions, cast spells, support,
00:11:35
Speaker
backup retreat whatever you wanted to do in a
Mad Max Game's Hidden Depths
00:11:39
Speaker
pause in the pause screen you can sort of move the camera around the battlefield at that stage and then on pause and sort of let it go in a semi.
00:11:49
Speaker
semi RTS fashion where you didn't really have to do it. I think you didn't have to keep clicking for attack. You sort of just set your character to attack and he would keep continuing to attack until you issued more orders and sent them around to your other team members. And I think just the scope of the world and the story and then that not
00:12:10
Speaker
real-time combat, but not turn-based combat. So leading into the future of what RPG sort of looked like now was sort of really revolutionary there. And like I said, just the whole scope and scale of Dragon Age Origins was incredible. And the voice acting, Australia's own Claudia Black plays the Morgana the Witch in it, which is fantastic. Your character doesn't have a
00:12:39
Speaker
voiced dialogue but you pick voice lines when you're interacting with other people which is quite similar once again to Baldur's Gate 3 and I just think it was
00:12:51
Speaker
watching that first trailer, which was like first gameplay trailer, which was actually really jarring because they had halfway through the trailer, it kicked into a Marilyn Manson song, which was fucking odd. Well, if you got some spare money to to spend on PR, then why not license a fucking really popular song for the time? Yeah, I mean, it's just it's just just odd. It felt really out of place. Marilyn Manson still popular in 2009. Oh, yeah.
00:13:16
Speaker
Fuck yeah, he was. He's got a, he's got a, he's got a song with John Wick. Oh, I don't know. Excuse me. I'll just go take out two of my ribs and suck my own dick. Okay. Prince. I mean tough cap. I mean Prince again. Um, Marilyn Manson.
00:13:39
Speaker
Old wives tale, but yeah, they're all old wives tales. But then you go and watch the cinematic trailer for Dragon Age, which was a completely pre-rendered look. Nothing like the game. And it's got a fucking 30 seconds to Mars song on it. So it was just.
00:13:55
Speaker
Wow. On that side of the trailers, it was- What a tone change from Mansoul. Yeah, but that was the style of the time, was to throw weird songs in your gameplay trailers. It definitely was, but it didn't, it was really jarring watching the trailers. I think I don't remember them being in there. Which is annoying because the soundtrack's beautiful. Yeah. And that's what I mean too, is I mean, you grab a game that's got a wonderful orchestral
00:14:20
Speaker
cinematic styled score and throw a couple of bands that are popular at the time into the trailers just for the fuck of it. And it's just if that was another thing why this the game exceeded expectations for me. I mean, I don't remember them being those trailers having that music at the time, but I would have seen it. And it's just going back and watching them today. It was really fucking jarring to to see that. And yeah.
Unique Gameplay Experiences
00:14:46
Speaker
I think Dragon Age Orange, I reckon it even holds up today if people wanted to get back to it. No, Tom's shaking his head in disagreement. No, not that it doesn't hold up. I know there are people who have gone back and played it recently and really enjoyed it, but I had the opposite. I was so intrigued by that trailer. I remember watching that trailer and going out and ordering the game and placing an order down so I could pay it off.
00:15:12
Speaker
I remember getting through it and being, I finished the story. I never went back and platted it. And I was just like, I cannot wait to finish the story so I can throw this disc out the window. I don't know that that gameplay style really didn't sit well with me. I'd played it. I had played it a few years prior to that in, um, Final Fantasy 12.
00:15:32
Speaker
Also had a similar style of gameplay where it's like you set attacks, I think you could pause it in the same, not in the same fashion. Like the way that they got to give Dragon Age credit there for that's why you paused it and you moved around the, like the, the battle to be like, cool. I need this guy to go and attack this one. And this like that setting orders was, was definitely the cool part. But yeah, it, it, it didn't.
00:15:55
Speaker
not exceed expectations in that like sense. It was just, I was misled by that trailer. I thought it was going to be more of a like,
00:16:04
Speaker
maybe a bit more third person-y Skyrim, but like I wasn't expecting that gameplay from it. And yeah, but I can see, I know why people love it and still love it to this day. And I don't think they ever really got captured that magic again. I mean, two, two was a quite a- Two was worse. Yeah. And it went more third person action RPG. And then three changed quite a bit across the board.
00:16:33
Speaker
And who knows what they're going to do with four, but they keep teasing. Yeah, who knows? I am. I am very interested to see with all modern engines and all the information they have these days to see what they actually do with four. I think it could be.
00:16:46
Speaker
I would hazard a guess that the success of Baldur's Gate would have either cemented their plans or made them go, oh, hang on a second. Maybe we need to go back to that. I don't disagree with that. I think that will have made a huge impact on all their choices. I have no opinion because I've played neither of your two games, Dan.
00:17:09
Speaker
And so the second one, like I said before, was the original Mass Effect. Sui's memory is fucking shocking, but he's also the one that got me onto Mass Effect back in the day. I don't even ever remember seeing this trailer, but like I said, I went back and watched it today just to get a gauge on. I knew it wouldn't be as good as what the games were. They flew under the radar until Mass Effect 2 was a really cemented... Yeah, I started with 2, yeah. Because it was the first one on the PlayStation as well.
00:17:39
Speaker
Oh, okay. Yeah, Mass Effect 1 must have been a PC only. Mass Effect 1 not without its bugs at the time, especially the planet side. The Mako? Yeah, the Mako. That's it. I couldn't remember what it was. The Mako was shocking. They've completely reworked it for Mass Effect Legendary Edition, which I'm going to, once I clean up,
00:18:01
Speaker
Baldur's Gate 3, I think I'm going to buy the Mass Effect Legendary Edition and go and play through all three of those. But Mass Effect 1, massive space opera, and it is a massive space opera. It is the absolute fate of humanity. Because they have just released the Legendary Edition, I don't want to spoil it for all those people that may have missed it back in the day and may want to play it. And intend to play it. Yeah, but there is a
00:18:27
Speaker
they each one of the three games are massive games in their own uh huge and yeah massive huge games in their own and the story does link all the way through all three of them um and continues on all the way all through three the three of them uh so it's it's quite a big endeavor to now hit all three in the legendary edition but
00:18:50
Speaker
It's absolutely worth it. Mass Effect 1 was groundbreaking in what it did, even though it flew under the radar for so long. Just introducing Shepard and the choices and his crew and just the whole world. I mean, the whole world and law that they created around it has just inspired so many cosplayers and artists and everything these days to really sink into the Mass Effect.
00:19:18
Speaker
the mass effect vibe for the whole thing but that trailer was just really uninspiring it could have just been. It actually reminded me that i've seen trailers similar to other games that i've gone oh yeah that looks really cool i wonder if it's gonna be like mass effect because.
00:19:37
Speaker
You get a lot of these 4K games that and RTS games that give you these cinematic boots on the ground kind of follow the soldier into battle trailers. Yeah. And then you go and play it. It's a 4K game that you've got to sit there and play politics and research.
00:19:56
Speaker
research tech trees and things like that. It never, it never fully fleshes out the way that the third person shooting in Mass Effect does. Once again, similar to Dragon Age Origins, where you issue water to your teams. And I don't know how they've done it in the Legendary Edition, but the first one you could pause in combat as well, flick through your team and issue commands and everything. Now, I think they may have adjusted that because I think they made the combat similar through to three.
00:20:26
Speaker
You could kind of, it slowed down. It didn't fully pause. I think you slowed down.
00:20:30
Speaker
But you could definitely issue orders to, you know, it was like cover cover based shooting and you would send, you know, Barrick or whoever and you'd go, hey, cool, go hide behind this and snipe from there. Or, you know, you'd send someone else to Tali to throw space magics from somewhere else or kind of, you know, tech hack and stuff. Yeah, it's one of those games. I wish it had come out originally. Like I dived into two and absolutely lapped it up, like,
00:20:58
Speaker
Yeah. There's a, the end of two was like stressful. One of the more stressful moments trying to get through a certain mission at the end of two. Um, and yeah, it's a, it's a fantastic series. So yeah, if you haven't played them, I highly recommend you jumping into them. Incredible games. And like they deal with some really big themes, especially more so, more so.
00:21:21
Speaker
two onwards. There's one, you've got two crew members in there that are different species and one of them was actually the species that was the arbitrator of genocide against the other species people. So you've got a
00:21:38
Speaker
make crew choices and moral choices to that scale kind of thing. There's some pretty big choices, decisions and choices and themes that are thrown around in the whole thing on a galaxy wide scale.
00:21:55
Speaker
And it's one of those games for, for a thing that he's meant to be galaxy wide. You do go pretty galaxy wide. Like you go to several systems kind of thing. Like it's not one of those ones where it's like you get to travel the whole land and it's like, there's this one little sandbox map. It's yeah. Some of the levels might be smaller, but you do star field.
00:22:15
Speaker
Well, we don't know, but we assume we'll take your word for it. Yes. Based on everything I'd said. Yes. Yeah. Assume that I'm not lying through my teeth for a podcast. There's no fast travel. Once you're in the Normandy, the ship, you have to go to, they're called mass relays.
00:22:33
Speaker
Uh, and that was set up by an alien race. Uh, and it's a, it's basically a jump point, but it's, it's, uh, it's kind of shaped like the halo energy sword thing. And they fly the Normandy up against the, well, within its radius kind of thing. Like a rail gun generates power.
00:22:52
Speaker
And that's it's that's its jump point. And I remember saying that for the first time, because I had no idea about it. You do that first jump through the mass relay and it's who the sound effects and the soundscape that they they do on the whole thing. And like even just wandering around the inside of the Normandy and talking to the crew and doing bits and pieces in there. It's yeah, wonderful, wonderful games. I highly recommend them. I highly, highly recommend them.
00:23:19
Speaker
That's when you get to endorse endorse your favorite shop in the Citadel.
00:23:26
Speaker
One of my favorite things to do in those games. Yeah, there's some weird little side missions there. There are some weird little side missions in that. All right, I'm going to jump in for one, I think. We can split these up. We don't have to do person by person, I don't think. Well, Dan spent. Yeah, I know. I realized that after he did both, but yeah, that's fine. He can talk about the games that I've picked. I've played all the ones that you guys have, except World of Warcraft, but anyway. Yeah. Spoilers.
00:23:56
Speaker
Mad Max. Mad Max. The PS4 Mad Max game. I remember watching the trailer when I came out and thinking,
Unexpected Gaming Successes
00:24:04
Speaker
that looks like a really dodgy knockoff of the Mad Max films.
00:24:07
Speaker
Like what are they doing it doesn't look like Max it doesn't like yeah the vehicles look kind of odd and the same but not the same and like the trailer originally was like more. Kind of like it set the start of the story but I showed you a little bit of the vehicle combat you ended up absolutely like loving and craving as you play the game.
00:24:31
Speaker
But it's definitely one of those games where I remember watching it and just going, cool, all right, there's a generic Max character. He's in the desert. It's unfortunate being a desert game. I'm just like, oh, good. It's just a whole palette of brown. There's some lighter browns, so maybe a bit of yellow. It's going to say yellow. But it's a lot of brown. And then you get into it.
00:24:57
Speaker
You get to craft your own car. The vehicle combat is some of the best vehicle combat I think I've ever had the pleasure of playing. It's definitely one of those things I'm sure I've still got in my library. I would happily go right now and just drive around and blow up some cars for a little bit.
00:25:15
Speaker
Like it was it was just so like once you realize what you needed to do like through the store and you got to that like 30% mark way through when you the map opens up and you get to go explore the whole desert. It was just like oh yeah I'm gonna go blow up some cars in the best ways possible I'm gonna jump off that throw an explosion down into his car and drive off laughing while he's like whole thing explodes it was just it was brilliant and then the story actually came out of nowhere first of those gonna be the most generic story ever and then it was like oh this is actually really cool like
00:25:45
Speaker
Like love story of man and machine talking about Max trying to get his, you know, get the car back and stuff. Um, and, but it just complete took the, took me by surprise how much I actually enjoyed playing that game once it came out. Um, cause you played at Pete, I know Dan's played it. No, no, I haven't. It's on a very long list of backlog.
00:26:08
Speaker
Yeah. On the flip side to that, I watched that trailer that you put the link in the chat for, and I'm like, fucks, it's just nostalgia. I want to go and play this again. But on the flip side of that, I remember watching the 15-minute dev hands-on showing of the gameplay, and I was in the same, I'm like, that looks fucking terrible.
00:26:31
Speaker
That just is so uninspiring and generic and rubbish. And then, yeah, the same thing when it came out. It was just wonderful.
Evolution of Gaming Community Events
00:26:40
Speaker
The worlds were fantastic. The Fort Raids and everything were great. It was. I mean, all of these games, in fact, I think that most of these games, because we do have some more modern ones, but we're in an age where you didn't get
00:26:57
Speaker
11 trailers through showcases and state of play where they go through game mechanics and detail it in gory detail you cinematic than your gameplay reveal than your fucking mechanics reveal and.
00:27:10
Speaker
100% I almost was going to cut it off for myself like games I was thinking to look at. I was trying to go PS3 backwards because it's halfway through the PS4 cycle. Yeah, the showcases started. The way that E3 trailers were delivered were different because you just had more focus on, yeah, like you said, mechanics and actual gameplay and devs sitting down and they may be playing like
00:27:32
Speaker
Well on the way, like a beta build, but they're, they're still playing the game essentially that you're going to play when he came out. Um, and also I think the way trailers are delivered now. Yeah. And the way trailers are delivered now, they are like.
00:27:47
Speaker
They're almost a weird art form to themselves, like they're short films, some of them like. There's an art form to how disconnected they are to the actual gameplay. Yeah, absolutely. That's what I think. I think a lot of the modern trailers do fall into the opposite bucket where they try and over deliver.
00:28:04
Speaker
Yeah, to suck you in, especially the bigger companies too. Ubisoft is the main culprit here. I mean, you'd think back to those Ghost Recon Wildlands trailers or gameplay trailers where they had the super generic
00:28:21
Speaker
chat for players. But all of Call of Duty games fit into that category. Call of Duty, all of those games, even the division. The division was the first easy to identify example for me because I got stuck on the hype train and there were like 15 trailers, dev talks, fucking, you know, 10 minutes of gameplay with a squad. There were multiple ones of those.
00:28:47
Speaker
That's that that's kind of the E3 era that kind of changed the face of trailers. And and I think, you know, like we've we've tried to keep this up like fairly positive, but the opposite side of that coin really is what we were talking about on chat a few days ago. Dan, it's just.
00:29:05
Speaker
The hype is bigger than the game on purpose. It's designed to capture an audience to buy the initial game. And then the initial game immediately sets to selling the fucking season pass that you have to continue playing the game before the season. It's actually interesting. The three that we've spoken about so far didn't have anything like that. I mean, I think Mass Effect and Dragon Age may have had some DLC, but Season Pass wasn't even a fucking term.
00:29:34
Speaker
back then. No. Yeah. No, he was. And then microtransactions went either. I had the Dragon Age season pass. I had the Mass Effect season pass.
00:29:43
Speaker
But back then also the season pass was about, because when I talk about season passes. Yeah. So there's two types of season pass. There's the, we plan to release three or four DLC content expansions in the next 12 months, prepay for it all now in one go, as opposed to the call the duty style season pass. And it's not just cod. What's the, Overwatch 1 and 2 did the same thing?
00:30:09
Speaker
Fortnite the biggest games of the moment. You spend your money in order to qualify to unlock items, but you have to unlock those items before the season closes or they're gone forever. And so the game ends up locking you into this treadmill of FOMO, and then obviously you pay for the next season pass. So it's a different kind of
00:30:33
Speaker
Trap. Anyway, sorry. I took the soft trap. All they do, they do the seasons. Seasons things have become massive for any kind of keeping a multiplayer alive. And one I will like for a game I loved, one that was a really bad theme for it is Doom Eternal has a horrible season backlog thing. Yeah, right. Battle modes. None of it, none of it really matters, but it's all just like, cool. I want, I want my Doom guy to look like he's crawled out of a lava pit. Yeah. Oh, I can't get that now unless I pay five bucks online. It's like, no, fuck you. Yeah.
00:31:03
Speaker
Just let me unlock it. Once the season ends, go, cool, season's done. You're not going to do that again. Here you go. Everyone have the thing, like. Yeah. So just on that side of it, I did buy the pre-order for Mad Max back in the day. And I got a beautiful Mad Max steel book with the interceptor on the front. Oh, it was actually, it's the magnum opus. It's not the interceptor. But it's that magnum opus using the interceptor that you could get the shell that looks like the interceptor.
00:31:30
Speaker
So I did go in on this before it came out, but that's because I was flying on from the Fury Road pipe train. I waited two years, I think it was two years before I played it and then it was released on PlayStation Plus and I was like, oh yeah, I remember watching that trailer, I'll jump in and then it was like,
00:31:51
Speaker
Why the hell didn't I pick this up at the start? I've waited two years to play this. This is stupid. I like how you described the character as a generic Mad Max. I think 10 years ago was around the time that you probably didn't want a video game featuring Mel Gibson because he was in a little trouble for some of the shit that he was saying. They were trying to get it. No, you're right.
00:32:11
Speaker
Hey, we're trying to kind of divorce the character from the actor. So originally, Max was actually voiced by an American and the Mad Max community and the Australians all kicked up a stink and said, no, this is- That's not fucking on, mate. This is absolutely- Well, that was cockney, so I'm glad they didn't go to that one.
00:32:30
Speaker
You could have just broken. You got to go right. They actually then rerecorded all Max's lines with an Aussie accent. I don't know if he was an Aussie, but he did put an Aussie accent and there was calls for it to Mel Gibson's brother to actually voice the character. Almost all Americans doing Aussie accents either end up sounding South African or New Zealand.
00:32:59
Speaker
Fury Road was released in May 2015 and the Mad Max game came out in August 2015. I played in 2016.
00:33:12
Speaker
from memory. But yes, I remember this. I think I think you can probably find some of the initial one of the initial gameplay trailers and it doesn't have the same voice actor that used to be in the Yeah, I'm pretty sure that that was the stink that got kicked up because the first trailer came out without without the Aussie. Yep. Yes, I was just
00:33:35
Speaker
Yep, the Brent Foster voiced him in the end, and he's an Australian actor and martial artist. Well done. There you go. Yeah, there we go. Thank you Wikipedia for giving me some quick information. All right, well that's, yeah, Mad Max, that was one for me. Shall we move on to one of mine?
00:33:52
Speaker
Yes, Peter, please. I'm going to kind of bundle two together and they were the ones that Tom said that we wouldn't talk about, but I'm not going to go into too much detail. So both Red Dead Redemption 2 and Grand Theft Auto 5. And it's almost like there's a lot of commonalities in the gameplay trailers that they released, obviously both being Rockstar Games in that they focused on the graphics and
00:34:19
Speaker
the world, but not really the storyline. So Red Dead 2, you knew who the main protagonist was almost immediately, but the depth of story, I guess the joy of playing the game that you walk out of that story with was never loaded into the hype train at the start of the game.
00:34:47
Speaker
I think there was hype in the sense that it's another red dead game and RDR one was so successful, but the gameplay trailers really didn't betray the depth and the the emotional content and the narrative that they were driving through that game and I think.
00:35:05
Speaker
You know in a in a really different kind of presentation in a different box it was kind of similar to gta five they talk about the fact that you have three characters. They talk about interwoven story they talk about the mechanics of bank robberies they talk about all of the extra curricular activities and how you can spend your money in paragliding and fucking yoga.
00:35:28
Speaker
racing bikes and customizing cars but it never actually goes into that the hype train and the trailers never really talked about. How detailed and intricate and interesting and emotionally hooked that storyline was for those three characters.
00:35:44
Speaker
There's a lot more depth to them than just being two dimensional pop outs you know i've got the white collar white guy middle aged man dealing with a plastic surgeon a pop out wife cuz that's kind of how they were painted at the start you've got the hood rat.
00:36:03
Speaker
and the African-American guy and he's presented as a very typical hood rat stereotype and then you got the yokel. And yet there's so much more complexity and depth to the actual story that I don't think that any of those trailers betrayed. And that's what I loved about those games, not the mechanics. Funny hearing you say that is that having played neither of them, intending to play RDR2, but I've no real desire to play GTA.
00:36:33
Speaker
But I've heard so much and not just from you guys, but like from just, you know, seeing posts on social media and websites and whatever, about how much RDR2 is that emotional game. Never see anything about that for GTA 5. The only thing I've ever really seen talk about that is like there's certain moments, but it's more like,
00:36:56
Speaker
The things that I've seen, especially in like, you know, quick little gameplay videos or like little, um, stream of things is always either multiplayer stuff and doing stupid things in the multiplayer, or it's the, like the weird things you find in the world. Cause it's so massive and so like a fool and all that kind of stuff, but never really about, or it's all about Trevor being batshit crazy, but that's the thing. You don't actually see any of the stuff you just talked about, which is really interesting for me to hear like.
00:37:24
Speaker
Yeah, I think the emotional level of the characters is quite different. RDR is very emotional for Arthur and the gang and GTA is more, the characters go through quite a bit of change.
00:37:41
Speaker
through through it, but it's not necessarily emotional change. There's this list. There's less there's less depth to it, but I still think because it's designed to be a comedy, right? You're going from a serious drama, a Western drama to a comedy. Yes. And so there's a level change there is a very, very, very black comedy. Yes. Yes. But definitely agree. Like all three characters in there, Trevor, Michael and I don't remember the third character.
00:38:10
Speaker
Yeah. I don't know why I think of that. I'll know it as soon as it will pop pop into my head in a minute. But yeah, there's there's there's more.
00:38:23
Speaker
There's a lot more to those characters than the surface level. Franklin. Franklin, that's it. They have a lot of surface level things, like Pete said. Franklin's from the Hood. Michael's a retired criminal that lives in the Hollywood Hills, the Vinewood Hills, and Trevor is just the white trailer trash. But then there's
00:38:47
Speaker
So much happens to give those characters more depth and you'd grow to love all three of them for their own faults and strengths. And they all have faults and strengths, which I think is, which is absolutely fantastic and just wonderful writing.
00:39:04
Speaker
Yeah definitely there's a death to them and none of them think they're the bad guy they all think they're there the right you know they know they're doing the wrong thing but they don't think they're inherently evil you know michaels trapped in white suburbia and and and being an ex crim like he has to come to terms that.
00:39:22
Speaker
But he's got his family, he's got his two kids that he protects in different ways through- And fucking hates at the same time. Yeah. And terribly hates the kids and the wife, but protects them all as his fatherly duties do. And then Trevor's got his, his mommy issues and all sorts of things. And then- And Franklin's kind of trying to escape and he thinks he's surrounded by fucking idiots. Yeah.
00:39:46
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. And trying to find a better life for himself and through the right or the wrong means. They're great characters. Cool. Back to you, Tom.
00:40:00
Speaker
I'm going to quickly review my beer now that it's warmed up a bit and I've had more than half of it and I'm feeling nice and I am feeling roasty toasty. Let me tell you, that nice warm booziness is kind of all hit the center of my head and it's all just trickling. It's like the egg effect. It all just feels like it's just rolling down.
00:40:20
Speaker
It's so much better as it warms up. The flavors are a lot more balanced. There's that I'm getting a real nice bitterness from the coffee coming through now. Um, and then the sweetness of that bourbon kind of offsets it. So it's a nice little like polar opposite kind of things meeting in the middle. Um, and then just a beautiful biscuit kind of malt base that's, that's coming through there. I'm going to give that a, uh, Oh, I'm gonna give that 4.75. That's really good as it's, as it's gotten, as it's gotten a bit warmer. Um,
00:40:49
Speaker
Yeah, it's, it's very nicely balanced. Um, and that's my fault for not taking out of the fridge soon enough. Yeah. Whereas mine's gone the other way. I mean, the, the, the flavor profile hasn't changed. Um, probably if anything tastes a bit boozier and less sweet than it did, but the smell is you remember smelling the lacquer thinner and in wood class in high school, that real instantaneous. Yep. That's what you get off the, off the aroma.
00:41:20
Speaker
It's just pure ethanol in that kind of burning up your nose kind of way. I'm still going to drink it. Do you want to talk about your next one? I just binge watched the entire season one of Fallout the TV series, so this one's front of mind for me.
00:41:41
Speaker
Yeah, Fallout 4. I obviously have a massive love of Bethesda games and especially Skyrim and more of their fantasy stuff. I remember diving into Fallout 3, I think I lasted
00:41:59
Speaker
Maybe an hour, two, and I went, nah, this is weird. I think it was just after I finished Oblivion, so it made sense that it would just be like- Oh, yeah, okay. It didn't, the world didn't set. Um, Fallout 4 for me- Go ahead, sorry, sorry. Oh, I was gonna say, Fallout 4 for me took-
00:42:17
Speaker
maybe two or three goes to get into. I think I started it, got out into the world, got to the settlement and went, okay, that's enough. I'll come back to that and didn't for a year or two. And then I went, oh, I should probably go back and play Fallout 4. I got some spare time now. Nothing that's really on my release calendar. I'll go do that.
00:42:35
Speaker
did the same thing, like, cause I would restart a game. Like I'll start from the beginning. I don't want to start halfway through or halfway through, but you know, um, started fresh, got up to the, the, the town, the settlement and went, nah, this isn't for me. And then, uh, and then did it a third time, but it was, uh, it was locked down when that happened. And I went, no, no, no, you are doing this. Stay with it. And I have, it's one of those ones that I've,
00:43:01
Speaker
Very very glad that I actually finally did I fell in love with that world. It's it but the trailer I remember saying it and I'm just thinking what's this fucking walking simulator like.
00:43:14
Speaker
You had the first start and it's like, it's all the fifties in that trailer, especially it's like, it's the fifties esque themes and all that stuff coming through. And then it cuts to the modern day of the fallout world. You see dog meat running around. Um, and then it cuts back and then does that back and forth thing a bit. And then finally it's, um, it starts showing off the world of, of fallout for the, the, the Commonwealth. And it was just like.
00:43:38
Speaker
I don't know if it was meant to be deliberate, but I just remember that they didn't show you really the shooting mechanisms. You just showed you some brief glimpses of the town. You saw the dugout place, which was Fenway Park. You saw other parts of the Boston, and then just walking through things.
00:43:58
Speaker
Okay, cool. Do you just walk around a bunch? Like I played a bit of Fallout, like Fallout three, like before I saw this trailer. And I'm like, yeah, the, the VAT system. I just didn't understand it. Cause I wasn't paying attention at the time. And I was just like, Oh, whatever. Fuck it. I'm not going to do this right now. Um, but then finally, when I, when I sat down into it, like
00:44:17
Speaker
Every character, so many of the characters has such rich backgrounds. Like Nick Valentine's my boy. Like if I could have any character come to life from that game, I want Nick Valentine just chilling with me like every other day, just being like, Hey, Nikki, what's going on? Say, um, is he the detective?
00:44:32
Speaker
Yeah, the robot detective. Yeah. He became my like, I sent Dogmeat home because I hated hearing him get shot and squeal. So I sent Dogmeat home. He's safely in the settlement. And then I, yeah, once I finally got to Nick Valentine, I was like, you're my pal to lead to the bitter, bitter, bitter end.
00:44:55
Speaker
It's interesting because I think your personal experience or the fact that you hadn't really played Fallout 3, probably steered your perception of the Fallout 4 trailer because those of us.
00:45:11
Speaker
For those of us who had played through Fallout since the original Windows and DOS game, Fallout 4's trailer was basically just a, this is the location you will be playing your next Fallout game in. And so it doesn't really go into the combat mechanics because everybody who'd played Fallout 3 knew what the combat mechanics were going to be. The VAT system has been in there since Fallout 3.
00:45:39
Speaker
Maybe tactics, I can't remember. I'm pretty sure it was three. Yeah. So really it was just showing you, I think that first trailer, particularly the one you linked is really about drawing a line in the sand between, let's see what I did there, between the Fallout 3 setting.
00:45:55
Speaker
which was similar to Fallout 2 and Brotherhood and or Brotherhood of Steel and Tactics. So it was kind of divorcing itself from that old setting and also the the night centric neon lights of Fallout New Vegas. So I think really what that trailer was about was there was already a shitload of hype for the next Fallout game and it was just it was showing existing fans the new world that they'll be playing in.
00:46:25
Speaker
That's funny. That is exactly why I threw it in there. As someone who is new to the Fallout series, it didn't draw me in, but when I actually finally sat down and played it, I was like, wow, wow, wow, this is great. I did all of it, all the DLCs except for one. There's one where you become
00:46:46
Speaker
one of the criminal or the roaming Ravager parties. And yeah, I didn't do that one, but all the other ones of like going in and like extra base building and all that kind of stuff.
00:46:57
Speaker
Yeah, like I had my full happy settlement in the end. I played each storyline to get through, you know, the since brotherhoods and whoever else it was. I can't remember. The Institute or the institution. Yeah, I actually haven't played Full Out 4, so I platinumed Full Out 3. I spent maybe 40 hours in New Vegas and just got bored and gave up. And I'd always intended to go back to 4. I'm actually kind of glad that they're re-releasing it as part of the TV series.
00:47:22
Speaker
PR engine for PlayStation 5 because I will play and plat Fallout 4 now.
00:47:29
Speaker
hundred and seventy four hours it took me to plan this I miss the fucked up humor that goes all the way back to the original Fallout game wandering through the desert you would have chance encounters like a like a wandering monster encounter Dan from D&D and it would be the I can't remember his name the question of from Monty Python of the Holy Grail and he would ask you three questions.
00:47:53
Speaker
And it was just exactly that kind of sense of humor is just like how like this is such a crossover into completely different, different genre and different intellectual property. And he would ask you three questions and sure enough, if you got one wrong, then you would just get absolutely obliterated by a minigun that you couldn't see off screen. Or otherwise, if you got all three questions right, he would just fly up into the sky and land in the pit next to them that, you know, the ravine that the bridge was crossing.
00:48:22
Speaker
And it's been a real nostalgic... I can't think of the words because this ABV is way too high on this beer, but it's... I have fond memories of all of the Fallout games, so I'll have to go back and play Fallout 4.
00:48:39
Speaker
I would 100% recommend jumping in with this new update that's coming through this next-gen update. I want to like Fallout. I've started three Vegas and four several times over and just get bored of them every time. I get a little bit further each time and just go, no, I can't drop any more hours into this. It just doesn't do it for me.
00:49:03
Speaker
And I don't know why. So your vault will never have the GEC. No, I just, I just, I just, I just can't, I just can't handle them for some reason. It just, uh, it just doesn't tickle my fancy. I've got the PS3 next to me. Like I would, I'm contemplating, I'd probably go find a copy of Fallout three and jump in. I've still got it. When you, when you return all the other games, once I get through my fucking pile. Yeah. Yeah.
00:49:28
Speaker
So yeah, that's, that's why I took that one in just like, I knew I wasn't on that hype train and it just like that trailer did nothing for me except go. Okay. All right. Well, the buildings are falling apart. So that's good. Um, the dog's cute. I'm a sucker for post-apocalyptic world settings. And yeah, I've always liked if you, if you parked the humor and the fucked up black humor, that is the fallout series. Um, the actual setting of the world has always been.
00:49:56
Speaker
quasi-realistic and realistic enough that it gets the hairs standing up on the back of your neck when the fucking Geiger counter goes off when you walk up to a pond of water. Yeah, they really captured my imagination from the start and have carried it all the way through. Yeah. Oh, that's the thing. This trailer did nothing for me, but then the game converted me. And yeah, like I said, I'll go back and play the previous version, like dive into it. Yeah.
00:50:25
Speaker
Yeah, no, you're talking about control because I've got to take a leak, so I'll be right back. Well, you go PR to penis. Control. Now, this is a game Dan and I heavily fell in love with.
00:50:41
Speaker
But something that completely, I think I would have seen a trailer as part of an E3 or something, you know, the year or two before it came out and just never registered. It was just like, that's weird. That's weird. Shooty, shooty. I'm not, I'm not going to get into that, but by God, am I glad I did. I think that's one of the most.
00:51:03
Speaker
interesting and innovative third-person shooters I've ever had the pleasure of playing. Completely agree. I saw bits and pieces of it. It must have been an E3 trailer or something too. And it was kind of like, yeah, yeah, cool. Yeah, maybe. Did you ever play Alan? Because it's part of the Alan Wake
00:51:22
Speaker
like games as well. And I never played those. No, I never had an Xbox and never played. I can't remember if the original Alan Wake even came out on PC until well afterwards. But I don't I can't remember them talking about Alan Wake being part of that world to start with. I don't think that come out until later on when people actually played it and started to find the clues. No, no, it definitely came out after the game and released. Yeah.
00:51:49
Speaker
Yeah. And I mean, even when I first got into it, I was my first maybe hour or two with it, because once again, knew nothing about it going into it and tried it because there wasn't much else out at the time. So I bought a copy, jumped into it and was like, yeah, OK, what the fuck is going on? Like, this is super weird and it's not really explaining much to me.
00:52:15
Speaker
got my ass handed to me by the first boss and then once I worked out how to beat that boss and then you I think you unlocked an ability after that I can't remember what ability it was and then then it was kind of it's when you started flying that's that was the game changer when you started like levitating a bit yeah I think that was until later though wasn't it or you didn't get the ability to to really hold it until later or something
00:52:40
Speaker
It was like a jump glide, opposed to flying. Yeah. And once you did get that, that changed the verticality of the game, the verticality of the combat. Once you started to unlock the abilities of the gun too, that was all fantastic. And then you sort of just embraced the weirdness of the world and gone, if they don't explain this to me, it's fun. It's kind of X-Files-y. And there was a TV show called The
00:53:06
Speaker
room 13 or something like that, that Louise got me onto not long after we were together. And it's about a hotel room that has all the items within the hotel room are inflicted with kind of the same sort of thing that they are in control. They all have some sort of ability. And
00:53:27
Speaker
I really enjoyed that. It only went for one season that got canceled and it really then ended up reminding me a blend of X-Files and that. And then I started to really get into it and understand or just appreciate what they were trying to build at that point. And then, yeah, the combat was the third person shooting was fun and chunky and
00:53:46
Speaker
And just a bit challenging because it was, it did have a little bit of jank to it. Um, but yeah, yeah, it wasn't as smooth as you would hope, but it was just like, but that kind of added to it in a weird way. Um, yeah, it was a bit like, especially like there was like the dash, the dash ability was really kind of distorted. Like, I don't know if it, and you know, I'm sure a developer could prove me wrong, but I'm still convinced that it never went the same distance every time.
00:54:15
Speaker
Like, as in it wasn't like a set thing. It was just like, you know, you press it and it's like, Oh, well, you know, depending on how much like magic ability you had left, like that's how much you did. I can't confirm or deny that, but that was always a theory I had of like, Oh, I wonder if that's it. Cause it never felt like it was like, I should have been behind that, that block or that like wall. I shouldn't have been shot. Then I hang on a second. They might be playing silly buggers with me. And there's so much because it's set in the Bureau of control. There's so much, uh,
00:54:42
Speaker
There's so much detritus around the place. There's desks and benches and everything. And you're trying to pick up, you pick up something and throw it at the enemies when they have their shields up to bust the shields. And it just would inevitably clip a chair or a table or something through and you'd get frustrated at that. So there was jank on that side of it. But then when the levitation came in, it kind of, and maybe that was a whole idea of them that later on when you got the levitate, you could
00:55:11
Speaker
pick it up while you're in the air and directly throw it at them so maybe it was a bit of a design choice as well to do it that way but have something set in an in a an oversized office building as well was a bit unique. It was like a real combo of the beauty of the setting of the dread remake movie and it's the one building you're in.
00:55:34
Speaker
It's multi leveled and you kind of go up and down through it but then it's also i don't know if you guys had this and this might be really too much about it but like i always had that one. I will always wanted my. It's gonna sound really bad to some international listeners.
00:55:50
Speaker
to create like a first person or third person shooter map out of my school. Yep, I know exactly what I just said. And you know, not for that reason, but yeah, like, just the way the building was built, it was perfect for those kind of things. Like I was playing like Counter Strike, but it's cool. And like when we were in school, and it's like, Oh, man, imagine if we could create like a map around this. There was very dangerous nowadays, but you know, whatever. So here
00:56:14
Speaker
So I had a when I was a kid and I still have pretty vivid memories of being a late teen having a fever dream about a
00:56:23
Speaker
weird science fiction story set in my school. Um, there's movies about what you just described. I think it was called target or tag. It was, um, an old, not, uh, early nineties, mid eighties, uh, film where they were shooting each other with train. Yeah. It was a, it was a, um, uh, cold war.
00:56:48
Speaker
spy film that starts with a guy, a young bloke playing like paintball almost in his school. It might have even been like a college or a university campus. Gene Hackman, Matt Dillon, Gale Hunnicutt, 1985, called Target. So I don't think you're way out there, man.
00:57:10
Speaker
No, no, I know. I just, you know, um, school shootings are bad. Uh, but yeah, it's one of those, but no, it's definitely one of those things. Like I think of, and I remember like when, when Call of Duty zombies started and me and my mates were really into that and we were just like,
00:57:23
Speaker
Think about places we worked and creating those into custom maps. And it's like plenty of times I've walked into the pub and just like that I'm working on and being like, oh, I know exactly how to defend this from zombies. Don't get me wrong. I've got a full plan. But these days there are games that you could do that, though. There are so many builder kits for so many games. There are. I'm certain you could do exactly what you're describing. Sorry, Dan. That was the beauty of Control was that it just was that.
00:57:54
Speaker
Well, it fulfilled that kind of dream I'd always had of like, that'd be a really cool setting to do this, but without the real world kind of like awkwardness of it or, you know, sense of guilt, I guess maybe.
00:58:08
Speaker
Yeah. And I mean, there's other environmental aspects of it too that made it quite fun being in an office building. You'd hit filing cabinets and the notes and everything could go everywhere. And it just visually, it's like the cafeteria setting with the walls. Yeah, there was those aspects of it too. And I mean, it had other dimensionality to it too, where you would walk through to
00:58:34
Speaker
Other dimensions and almost challenge maps on other dimensions some of it was story based some of it wasn't and some of it was secret bosses uh For power-ups and things like that. So there was there was a whole bunch of
00:58:48
Speaker
environmental difference outside of the environmental difference within the different levels of the office building, which is a very, very cool game and has a PS5 graphical update as well, if anybody's interested into it. If you haven't had that one to your list, 100%.
00:59:07
Speaker
Yeah, it's on my list because you guys hyped it up so much. It's not particularly long either. I remember you saying that before too. In sort of 10 or 12 hours, I think. Yeah, okay. I got the platen 40 hours. God, I love my trophy out. That's so good. I've got a four day weekend coming up for NZK, so I might smash it out. He's on. That's me. Yeah, Pete, what do you got?
00:59:31
Speaker
Yeah sorry I misread your show notes I thought you had four games but you've actually got two trailers for control. That's my bad I would have just held it a bit longer to talk about Ghost of Tsushima. No let's jump in. I know that there's some contention around this Dan I think disagrees Tom may disagree but for me Ghost of Tsushima's gameplay trailer didn't really
00:59:57
Speaker
Like it certainly betrays the beauty of the Japanese setting and it betrays the the barbaric samurai combat. But to me it didn't really. Betray the parts of the game that I enjoyed and that is the Zen calmness and that almost ASMR soundscape that are created throughout the game.
01:00:22
Speaker
uh, nor the importance of the story. To me, you know, we talk about emotional narrative story games as, as probably maybe it's just our age, but you know, we've played that many action combat games where there is no real narrative and we've kind of gotten over that. And I think we, we probably gravitate towards something a little bit more depth these days, but to me, Ghost of Tsushima really hit home.
01:00:48
Speaker
with the narrative context and with that Zen like relaxation while you're traveling through the world that I don't, I didn't get from the trailer. There was no real hype for me. It was just another Ronin game, whatever that means. It's another samurai game. So that's why I included it in my list. I think for me, like just what I talked about just before we started recording was the, um, it showed a little bit of that. Like obviously that trailer, like we kind of discussed was a bit,
01:01:16
Speaker
preset. It was it was it was a molded kind of thing. It like wasn't what you naturally occurred in the game. And I'm sure there are better trailers for that or now obviously just people showing their own gameplay. But like I said that one that one I think that first thing that I fell in love with that game was when he jumps when Jin jumps on the horse.
01:01:37
Speaker
and just starts riding through that long grass and you got wind flowing behind you and that I was like, oh, I will I will ride through that for hours doing nothing like and I did. I spent many hours riding. Yeah. I didn't appreciate. I like it was pretty, but I didn't appreciate the depth to that. It actually I think.
01:01:58
Speaker
Thinking back on it it really threw me back to being younger and playing some of the zelda games just jumping on a poner and riding around the fields like that was a massive part of like ocarina of time like you had to use the horse to get around and i'm a sucker for any game that has a horse i'm in hundred percent let me ride a horse around like i love it but yeah i just remember saying that i was just.
01:02:21
Speaker
like the over-the-top windness and I think that's a term we can use for Ghost of Shema like the wind is over the top in the way it's displayed but like I remember like seeing that and I was just like oh yeah that's that's the scene I want to be I want to spend time in that it was the same as when I first saw like Black Flag and the sailing I was like oh I want to go sail the Caribbean ship and I did that for hours too it's just one of those things like
01:02:48
Speaker
It's not so related, it does nothing for the game, it's just for me. That's my thing. I'll happily spend two hours just sailing around, riding around, doing whatever. It's just enjoyable. Yeah. I think none of the AC games made the list because it was just a mental amount of hype in the lead up to those games. That excludes them automatically, whether they deliver or not. Dan, you had an alternate opinion on Ghost of Tsushima.
01:03:16
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I just thought that that original gameplay look, it was once again, I think it was going back. It was an E3 trailer. It was just it was just a bit misleading to how the gameplay and the combat played out. Just it was that trailer showed it to be far more cinematic and
01:03:37
Speaker
closer up camera wise, uh, much more like a film than it did played, played like a video game. I would love to see this done. Like if they could remaster ghost issue Seema, like, and I know they won't, and I'm not saying they need to. Um, but this is, if they converted the current game, which I absolutely loved, uh, to an update, like how that
01:04:05
Speaker
So that gameplay trailer looks with a closer camera, tighter combat and much more one-on-one combat more than the Arkham sort of style combat that it was. It kind of gives me ideas of this is what they did with the Witcher 3 in the enhanced edition that they released last year, which is basically what they did. They tightened the camera into more of a over-the-shoulder God of War style.
01:04:28
Speaker
pulled it all in tighter, which is what they could do with Ghost of Tsushima and give it that camera angle. I'd love to see that more cinematic camera angle. I mean, the game was incredible. Absolutely incredible. I just don't think... Maybe that's what's going to happen in two. They'll pull that in. Potentially. Potentially, yeah. And I think that gameplay trailer was also a little bit misleading in how
01:04:59
Speaker
much the game ended up leading in leaning into the ghost mechanics and the things that you had to the missions you had to do as the ghost we've gone over it before I definitely chose the the that was a choice the choice of the samurai path even though it wasn't really a choice it wasn't a
01:05:18
Speaker
a set in concrete gameplay choice. I just chose to play it. It was an enduring choice that you made over and over. Yeah. So that was, that was just something that I felt that gameplay trader kind of misleaded, misled, misled with. But I mean, either ways, it's a fucking fantastic. I guess only in the sense of that's the way that sucker punch wanted you to play it. They wanted you to lean into the ghost. I think more so.
01:05:48
Speaker
If you look at that trailer, it spends a decent amount of time in that combat with those six or seven troops. And you could tell having played the game, obviously they removed the prompts and the GUI, but you could tell that that very first attack from your Ronin was that standoff mechanic, and then all of the other fighting was just him fighting. So,
01:06:16
Speaker
You know, I think they balanced that against, that's the loud combat style, if you like, versus the next sequence, which was set on the rooftops and him really sneaking around as a ghost. Yeah. So I think it was fairly balanced as a, as a trailer, but to me, it makes the grade because there wasn't really a super amount of hype. We were looking forward to it, but it wasn't Ubisoft for more hype.
01:06:42
Speaker
Oh no, it dwarfed anything that Ubisoft ever done for me. I was, I was champion a bit for that to come out. I definitely got that day one and jumped straight in. Yeah. And there hadn't been anything Japanese on that scale before. Yeah. So it was, it was something, it was something, especially when you think back to it now and like compared to it to like Rise of Ronin, which has just come out and it's just been the trailers have actually made it more.
01:07:09
Speaker
It feels more disappointing. It's like, I actually, I'm not keen to jump into that right now. It's something that I may, I'll probably play eventually, but, um, I think back to when ghost was getting announced and released and I was like, Holy, I can't wait to play that. Like that was definitely one for me that like was.
01:07:29
Speaker
It didn't necessarily exceed expectations, but it hit them. It hit them, I guess is probably the better way to put it. Yeah. Yeah. Fair enough. Yeah. Compared to some other games. Yeah. The only other one I wanted, I didn't put in the show notes, but I thought might hit all three of us is days gone.
01:07:45
Speaker
I don't know if that's what you guys mean. There was absolutely there was no hype behind it. But I'm not sure if that's more a case of and I don't think it is like I think that's definitely a case of us selling it to each other at the time. And like it was the only reason it came back and the only reason any of us played it was because it was it was released for free on the PlayStation Plus, wasn't it? Yeah, I bought it day one.
01:08:16
Speaker
Oh, did you? Were you hyped for it before? Yeah. It was, I think it was another one of those, I'm bored. There's nothing else to play. Let's give this a go. I bought it and played a little bit of it and then didn't show it to the side. Didn't play it for probably another two years. Didn't finish it for two years, but I had a copy of it from, yeah, from basically day one. From day one. Yeah.
01:08:39
Speaker
Whereas Tom, did you, did you, I remember, I remember when it first was announced, like obviously I love a good gameplay trailer when it comes out. Um, I remember hearing about it and going, Oh yeah. But I remember it was like, it was around the time of like.
01:08:57
Speaker
So with the share house I lived in, we were obsessed with the original COD Zombies. It was like our favorite thing to play couch co-op, but then also online with two other mates who were couch co-op. Endless hours of just running around shooting zombies.
01:09:11
Speaker
And so when this, I think was coming out, it was kind of as cod zombies started become really complicated and they started adding like this storyline to it compared to just your four soldiers trapped in a, in a finite area. And it's a hoard mode. Um, and I remember that going like, Oh, okay, cool. Whatever. Oh yeah. As a bike guy. Um,
01:09:33
Speaker
I like sandwich well that's cool but yeah that that was about as far as i went until it was. Ninety percent so i got it as a pastel scam and then i got into it and obviously.
01:09:47
Speaker
But that was, it wasn't a, it was initial slow burn, but then dear God, did like, you know, 20 seconds into that week, did someone pour some gasoline on it? Because it just went, whoa, okay, we're in now. We're hook, line and sinker. Everything I'm doing now is days gone. I am a Seattle zombie hunter in the wilderness on a motorbike. Nothing else matters. Like, yeah. It must have gone to, to PlayStation Plus library pretty quickly because it was only released in 2019. Yeah. Yeah.
01:10:16
Speaker
to a pretty mediocre reception and then all of a sudden they've exploded out of nowhere way after the game had been released. Yeah it did and I think that but I remember seeing that original gameplay trailer where they showed him fighting the horde and I'm just like that's just fucking that's bullshit like this is this is there is absolutely no way that is going to be
01:10:38
Speaker
part of the game. The way the game plays out. And I'm just like, I call total bullshit on this and how wrong I was. Like it was obviously designed to capitalize on the Walking Dead fever at the time. It was about two years after release. So it was released in April 2019 and it was the April 2021 PS Plus game.
01:11:02
Speaker
And I think it probably, I'm fairly sure I remember reading that it picked up more fans from that PlayStation Plus release than it ever had originally. Oh, I remember it's one of those ones that like, after seeing the trailer, I remember looking at it and going, nah, I've got something else to play. I think one of those ones that like, it was really set on the fence.
01:11:22
Speaker
I think everyone was kind of Walking Dead and out by that stage too, because Walking Dead was, it was the ninth year of Walking Dead at the time. And that was, you know, people had dropped off at season five, six. So. Definitely. Yeah. And it definitely held that vibe. But yeah, I mean, fantastic game. Yeah. I still have nostalgic memories of it. I would like to go back and play, but there are so many games in my list that I never will.
01:11:49
Speaker
I've got one last one and I'm not going to harp on about game mechanics like I had before, but certainly games that exceeded expectations and over delivered on the hype. So World of Warcraft for me made that list. And if you go back and watch the trailer, the gameplay trailer that I linked for you guys, the gameplay trailer is a tragic
01:12:14
Speaker
mess of fly-throughs of poxy graphics, which were groundbreaking at the time in fairness, and gameplay with zero explanation. It shows everything that I hate about MMOs in that trailer. Yeah. And at the time, so when Blizzard announced that they were- It's 2004 as well. Yeah.
01:12:34
Speaker
When when when blizzard announced they were making an mmo based on the the warcraft, franchise, the warcraft ip, there was a collective fucking grown. Because at the time that the big MMOs of the day, there was a dark age of camelot or dayock, there was ever quest quest to came out at almost the same day as World of Warcraft.
01:12:59
Speaker
And there was Asheron's call. And EQ and Asheron's call or AC were pretty tragically bad MMOs.
01:13:08
Speaker
Dayock had some cool mechanics, some castle siege mechanics that they're still implementing today, but I think everyone just kind of groaned it. They're just cashing in fucking typical crap from big game studios. You know, there's a lot of, lot of support for the, uh, the Warcraft games. Now they're just going to make a really shit MMO and it.
01:13:30
Speaker
literally changed the face of gaming for online games. It redefined the standard for how enjoyable and how much in-depth narrative you could get out of an MMO that was online. It changed the face of live service games forever. I think it definitely fits. I could spend five or 15 minutes talking about it, but I think it fits in terms of games that I've delivered on the hype.
01:13:58
Speaker
The only thing is I can't watch that trailer and not think of Leroy Jenkins. I see those graphics again. It's the OG poxy graphics. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I get nostalgic too. And I didn't get into WoW until the first DLC, which was, I think 18 months after the game it came out. So.
01:14:17
Speaker
I was not an OG player. No. And I've obviously never played it, but I remember I had a really good time. Weirdly, one of the best work experiences I've ever had was when I was working at EB and one of the expansions came out and just talking to the people about just how excited they were for coming in and ordering it and getting it ready and like all the stuff I did the midnight launch for it kind of thing. And it was just like, holy crap. Like that's great. Like, and they just, there's all these, all these like,
01:14:45
Speaker
The girls and guys are just there just being like, I cannot wait, like, can you give me my copy? Now I need to get home and play it. I've like, I've taken the weekend off work. I'm like, sir, it's a Wednesday and they're like, I don't care. I've taken the rest of the week off work. Like I need to put as much time into it. It's just, it was that passion. I was just like, fuck yeah, that's it. And then like, yeah, like I have a lot of time for that community. I think they're just, they're just great at that. It's the only game that I've ever lined up to for a midnight launch to buy.
01:15:13
Speaker
So I didn't do, like I said, I didn't, I didn't play the game at launch. I bought, uh, I bought into it just as Burning Crusade released. And then I lined up for Wrath of Lich King, Cataclysm, Mists of Pandaria and Warlord. Cataclysm, that was it. That was the one I did.
01:15:32
Speaker
and Warlords of Draenor. So four DLCs I lined up at midnight to make sure that I got my collector's edition of the DLC. And the only other thing I've ever lined up for was the PlayStation 4 at JB Hi-Fi. That's it. So it's the only game that I've ever queued up for. Do you ever think we'll ever see the return of that? I don't think we will.
01:15:56
Speaker
No, the world changed. Even Midnight releases. Everyone's now, there's so many people who pre-ordered online and pre-load it through the PlayStation store or Xbox store and stuff. Yeah. Take three times more.
01:16:14
Speaker
Everything on the PlayStation Store is more expensive than buying. Oh yeah, 100%. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, the brick and mortar stores, like those lineup events, like I did a few of them when I worked at eBay. I did a couple of cod ones where it was like, we had a, we got given a demo disk and we had that one console on the store and Cori Center. And you just have a crowd of people like that. And like we had one of our staff was there to go, yep, you died. Control over, go back to the back of the line. You can play again soon. Like, yeah, it was just that. And it was just, yeah.
01:16:42
Speaker
But no, I don't think we'll have, we'll ever have that again. Um, yeah, different industries I think still have it, but yeah, not, not the gaming industry or, or movies, really. I think everything on that side of it's pretty much burned out these days. I mean, you, you would never get a huge hype for a Star Wars cinematic release like you did previously because there's so much on Disney plus it's not like there's a 10 year drought now between. It's just a saturated channel. Yeah.
01:17:11
Speaker
Oh yeah well this thing it's the thing of like we've talked about with some movie releases before we've gone soft topic. I mean we've done talking about our games like we've talked about before it's like I could go to see this in the movies or I could get the day one I can pay a movie ticket price to watch it at home kind of thing now.
01:17:31
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, you can sit in gold class for 54 or you could buy it for 30 bucks. Yeah.
Shift to E-sports and Industry Critique
01:17:37
Speaker
So, you know, it's like trying to try to drive a speedboat in a bathtub sometimes, but you can do it.
01:17:44
Speaker
Hmm. Yeah. Interesting. I mean, I think, I think COVID, COVID probably put a nail in the coffin for some of these, these in-person hyped up community events. They were, they were already losing energy. They were already kind of petering out and then COVID just killed it. So I think they also, they switched from game releases to things like e-sports. I think a lot of the gaming community.
01:18:09
Speaker
especially the younger gaming community, have switched to those e-sport events. Because I know there's that fortress bar in Central and they're doing e-sports events that people go to line up for to get seats to sit in and stuff. You see those stadiums that get filled and stuff. There's still no KO for e-sports in Australia though. There's no e-sports TV channel like there is in the US and Korea. Is it not on KO? I thought they did add something.
01:18:39
Speaker
I heard that they were adding it to one of them. It's not advertised as such. They might have, but apparently Blizzcon stopped for four years. That was the
01:18:52
Speaker
One of the cons, the cons definitely, they died. Thanks to COVID and E3 being shit for years. I think they were already dying and COVID just put the nail in the coffin though, because E3 had run out of steam. I remember us sitting down for podcast episodes and getting to the end, it's like, is there even an episode in this content? Because we sat there and groaned for three hours about how shit everything looked.
01:19:18
Speaker
And I mean, I guess this re-emphasizes what we've been talking about this entire episode and got brought up halfway through. I mean, you talk about even Tom's best mate, Jeff Keighley, that runs his games awards each year, runs his game awards each year.
01:19:43
Speaker
The amount of shit that we watch trailers there now and go, yeah, okay, whatever. I just think gamers are exhausted. Jesus Christ. I mean, look, personal attacks on, on douchebags aside, I think, I think gamers have wisened up that no matter how, like every, name a gamer who hasn't been super excited about a game release and then being utterly disappointed when it actually came out.
01:20:11
Speaker
It's just that the industry has underdelivered and underwhelmed for such an extended period of time. Yeah, there are gems. It's definitely that. But it's almost like that they put 50% of their development fund into PR and forget to finish the fucking game.
01:20:30
Speaker
gamers for I think it got to a point where gamers accepted that behavior without pushing back. And it's only recently they've started saying, you know what, there's a bunch of really sick indie games out there for a third of the price and they will actually give me a gaming experience I'll enjoy. I don't
Indie Games and Immersive Experiences
01:20:49
Speaker
need to spend one hundred and thirty dollars on this game anymore. Yeah. I think the what I'm playing at the moment banishes Ghost of New Eden. Like I saw those trailers. I think it was at
01:21:01
Speaker
the game awards or something like that. I forget where I originally saw it. I remember we shared a trailer around it. Yeah. That looks cool. Let's just see how much of that actually translates through to the game. The game's incredible. I absolutely love it. I didn't include it on this list, one, because I haven't finished it, two, because I want to do the breakdown in the main review podcast episode.
01:21:27
Speaker
But the amount of love... It's the same reason Helldivers 2 isn't on this list. So the main reason that you can see the love that the devs have put into every aspect of this this game and like there's so many dialogue lines recorded. I can't tell whether they've actually repeated dialogue lines in like summoning of ghosts or things like that because there's so much out there. There is some Gaelic lines that I like the sound of Gaelic so I've
01:21:57
Speaker
doing each time i said galick and i've seen a couple of then come up but they've they've obviously gone. Let's take all the knowledge of previous that we've learned and people have said they hate repetitiveness and like it throws them out everything let's let's.
01:22:13
Speaker
not do that. Let's record a bunch of lines. And because it is a very heavily scripted linear game, I guess they could go, okay, when the player gets to this, this is the specific line for the summoning that goes to in this area, even though you've done it a couple of times before. They're kind of like challenge areas. There was a bit of hype into that game though.
01:22:35
Speaker
There wasn't much, there was a couple of trailers, a couple of really flashy trailers. I think it was more us looking at it going like that was that like an outburst. We talked about it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And the other thing that really gets me too is I know we're off topic here and I'll pull the pin on this straight after this is they've just, they've animated everything.
01:22:51
Speaker
Like it's it's exactly like God of War where there's no break in the load like for load screens. If you if you fast travel, yes, there's a break there because it's an instantaneous fast travel. There's only a break there. But like you do a travel between the real world and the void. And there's a specific cutscene that happens for him going into the into the void to hide the load screen. But it's it's contextual.
01:23:19
Speaker
So it is purposeful for... It's like when Geralt sits at the campfire to move time. It's a similar thing. It adds to the experience. Exactly. Yeah,
Conclusion and Listener Engagement
01:23:30
Speaker
completely agree. And I think that's just my last quick thing about a trailer that the hype, the game's outdone the hype for it. Cool. I think that's it. Yeah, I think that's a good hit. Good hit. Sounds good.
01:23:46
Speaker
I'm toasty and drunk now, so I think I'm going to crack another tenner and go play some Eldarvers too. You're going to do it, you dirty dog. If you made it this far, thank you very much for listening. Yep. Thank you. Yes. See you next time. And let us know in the comments, if you like and subscribe, games that you feel didn't live up to the hype. No, lived up to the hype, exceeded the hype. You can also let us know the game. You can also let us know if you remember the topic better than Tom did. We're still not sure what we're doing, but anyway.
01:24:16
Speaker
If you liked the game, let us know. We'll play it if we haven't played it and then we'll let you know if we liked it or if we think how much we hated it. Fuck you.