'Control Resonant,' 'Silent Hill: Townfall,' and 'Fire Emblem: Fortune's Weave' Reactions | Button Mash

[MUSIC] Hello, and welcome into The Ringerverse, your Nexus feed for all things fandom. I am Ben Lindberg, senior editor at The Ringer and your host here at Buttmash, where we keep ourselves clean so that our centrails, like post-patch Marvel's Wolverines, will be slightly less detectable. But no, we still can't entirely toggle off our forecasts. Joining me today is Ringer Senior Audio Producer Steve Frame Alman. Hi, Steve. Sorry, that was the board. Yeah, the board will be our fourth for this episode. Steve, you have already acquired a steam deck and a steam machine. You got to catch them all. Will you be acquiring a steam frame as well or are you drawing the line there? I'm drawing the line there. I've got an old Oculus that's taken me all the way, so we're going to run that into the ground first. Same. Okay, so no valve, the R headset for you. We are also joined by Ringer Deputy Art Lead, Matt, St. Matt Melia, James. Hi, Matt. Hello, I can't compete with Steve's impression of the board. That was disorienting. That was solid. That was solid. Yeah. I used the board for this. You used it for this. Well, it's fall 2026, which means we are inundated with good games and just doing our best to bail out the boat before button mesh capsizes and sinks beneath the wave of new releases. Today, we will be covering three new games in varying degrees of depth, but all without spoilers. Two of them, a pair of paranormal, or I suppose I should say, paronatural, somewhat unsettling games come out the same day this podcast does. Control resident and Silent Hill Townfall will also share some impressions after just scratching the surface of Fire Emblem Fortunes weave. And boy, do I wish I had divine sand from that game to give myself more time to play. So before we get to the three new games, that's our something new. I thought we could start with something old, three old games, three old franchises, in fact, because there's been some news there have been recent developments pertaining to three venerable franchises, at least a couple of which have seen better days. And so we are seeing attempts to freshen them up and rehabilitate and resuscitate them. And I thought we could kind of compare how they're going about it and how well we think it will work. The first is of course World of Warcraft, the second is Destiny, and the third is Halo, which of course was once made by Bungie. And then later by Halo Studios, but maybe not so much anymore, Bungie of course does still make Destiny sort of, or at least is bringing back old Destiny. So maybe we can start with Wow here, because we have different approaches to keeping these games vital and trying to retain players interest or bring players back to the fold. Blizzcon happened earlier this month and there were a bunch of big Blizzard announcements. We got Diablo V confirmed for 2029, not that anyone didn't think there would be a new Diablo, but now we know at least ostensibly when we will play it, Starcraft is coming in 2030. And not your old Starcraft, but Shooter Starcraft and not Starcraft Ghost either. This is an entirely new take on Shooter Starcraft coming in 2030. However, years before all of that, we are getting World of Warcraft forever. And that is coming out on November 4th, which is a day before the Ocarina remake, a couple of weeks before GTA 6. And this is sort of a third variant of World of Warcraft. There is the same old World of Warcraft, which is not the same as it used to be. It has been continually developed and expansions have been coming out for 20 plus years. Then we have Wow Classic, which was introduced in 2019, rolled the main game back to Vanilla Wow. And yet that has also proceeded now for several years and developed an advanced past that point. And so now a third prong Wow forever, which will be a kind of alternate original Wow that will never advance. It will just be trapped in the same time period forever for those who want to take themselves back to that time. But with an alternate look and alternate content. And so it's sort of a triple pronged approach to keeping Wow vital in its third decade. So what do you guys make of adding Wow forever to the suite? And just generally how Blizzard has managed to keep World of Warcraft going concerned for this long? Matt, any thoughts? I'm just impressed, honestly, that they can keep figuring out how to reintroduce this game. And that are not only appealing, but very appealing to people who are fans. I never had a Wow period. I've had several friends who have been sucked into the vortex, never to be seen again. Yeah. I am happy for everyone who is a, as a wow fan. I will not be hopping into this and seeing if I can complete it before GTA 6 comes out personally. You can never complete Wow. That's the whole point of forever. Yeah. Steve, what do you say? I'm with Matt. I'm impressed, really, because we know like as much as we Prattalon about like how we hate live service games and how we really don't think that like the model of trying to sustain a player base for untold amounts of time until your business model either runs out or the player base gets annoyed with you like World of Warcraft. Not only is the OG, but it has maintained the model for now decades. And it is wildly impressive about the fact that not only have they been able to relatively maintain this player base, but also kind of keep them for the most part happy. Like when they, they have made mistakes and they have made things that have gotten the community up up and up in a twist. But like they understand the value of that dollar because Activision Blizzard is always chasing it. So I mean to their credit, they will listen to them. And this seems to be going over pretty well with them. Will I personally be trying it? Maybe probably not though, but I'm proud of them. I'm happy for them. Yeah. At least to all involved. Kind of a clinic in franchise management, just that they have managed to stay at the top of the genre at least. And maybe the genre's popularity has ebbed and flowed, but Wow has been dominant for decades. And that's pretty impressive. And I guess it's kind of capitalizing on the fact that it was a super mainstream crossover success. It just became synonymous with the genre. And so it got this foothold, it got this market share and it just has refused to relinquish it for years and years and years. And there are that many at least ongoing games you can say that about for this span of time, maybe Counter-Strike, which has evolved of course and existed in various forms, but still will be at the top of player count leaderboards today to manage to sustain this for so long. And yeah, they've made missteps and the community has revolted various times. But it seems like the solution is something for everyone, okay? You just want the vital, ongoing, ever-evolving Wow. We'll give you that or you want to roll back to the beginning and then proceed from that point, okay? Here's classic for you or here's forever. If you just want to sort of stay in the early 2000s forever, but with way better lighting optionally now. So this is smart, I think, and it's hard, we haven't been playing Wow for decades and decades and so we lack the personal perspective perhaps, but just evaluating this from afar. Even though Blizzard, at least until recently, had sort of fallen on hard times and had made some missteps and this Blizz Com was kind of about declaring, hey, Blizzard is back and look at all we've done and we're providing new content for all of our franchises. No franchise has left behind, but wow is sort of the model that maybe games like Bungie or Halo, which we're about to talk about, would like to emulate, just keep the crown for this one. And it's not coming out in 2030. So that's great. Yeah. What are the odds, by the way, that Diablo V hits this 2029 target and Starcraft hits this 2030 target, because that's calling your shot three or four years in advance. That's a bold move. There aren't really any other video games that have confirmed release years that far out. I almost look at it with contempt because I'm just like, oh, really? You really, okay, Blizzard, you think you're that consistent and you think you got this? All right, great. We'll see. We'll see. I think Xbox here is just trying to try to make everyone think that things are going swimmingly at every opportunity as they lay off hundreds of people at a time. Yes. We will address that in a second. Get us ready for Starcraft in an incredibly long time from now. Yeah. It's interesting because Blizzard has always been the, you'll get it when it's done company. And so it seems as if they're trying to change that narrative a little bit and you wonder how much of that, if any, is pitched toward the corporate overlords at Microsoft and Xbox have talked a big game about focusing on the big franchises. And so here's Blizzard saying and they've already undergone layoffs and and more are coming. So it's not as if this is staving that off. But you got to think at least part of this is saying, hey, you want big franchises? Here they are. We have them. And by the way, it's it's going to take us three or four years. So you got to let us cook until then. You know, I don't know if that will will work for them. It is amazing though to even to think of committing to work on the same single project for that long. With some uncertainty about how or even if it'll turn out, I mean, we're seeing this more and more across the industry as it takes longer to make games. You have studios or creators who are sort of mapping out their futures and their mortality and being like, well, I have this many years left of life, which means I guess maybe I could make three more games if I'm lucky if I don't get it by a bus or a possessed bus in the Manhattan of control resident or something. I mean, you really have to do some long term planning here because it takes so long. And you know, as people who we make podcasts that come out every week, we do art for articles that come out every day. It's a totally different mindset to just burrow into secrecy, not disclose really anything about what you're doing. And then four years go by and hopefully a game comes out at the end of that. It's just man and sometimes in the gaming world, things get canceled and scuttled and you get laid off and then all the best laid plans fail to come to fruition. So figures crossed for Blizzard and for a world of Warcraft. It's very suspicious. The Diablo part especially, even more so than the StarCraft, because Diablo 4 right now is in a place where the community is pretty psyched about what's happening and future plans. And it just seems very strange to announce Diablo 5 while Diablo 4 still has a good deal of momentum. Like this is something that Nintendo would never do. Right. They would never tell you about something that's upcoming while the prequel to that is currently still got traction. Or you know, we're waiting for the Mario game announcement or the next Zelda. So 10 years might go by before we hear from Nintendo that we get confirmation that the sequel we all know is coming is coming. Yeah, but I also think that like Blizzard and Activision aren't above like inflating the stock price as it were to be like, hey portfolio and stockholders for 2027 and onward. Guess what? We've got these massive games that'll be coming out in a half of a decade from now. And please be excited. Please be excited. Yes. It's not like there's any like and how many Blizzcons do you think they're going to be like gaming this out for like how many Blizzcons will we have until 2030 like so many. Evidently, it won't be annual. But yeah, this was a big unveiling. This was to to make headlines. And they did. And a lot of people were pleased by those headlines. But also you got to be somewhat skeptical until we see those things actually come out nonetheless. Blizzard has done a decent job of revitalizing games that had fallen by the wayside such as Overwatch, etc. It's also interesting because this is all of course of a piece with the general backward looking nostalgia exercises that we are doing across culture, especially in gaming where everything is being remastered and remade. And World of Warcraft is kind of just well, what if we kept it going? And also this is essentially, you know, the MMO equivalent of saying, let's reboot. Let's re-release. Let's remaster or recreate. And because of the art style of wow, I think that's been the interesting takeaway is that so many wild players who go back decades have just been blown away by the lighting improvements here because World of Warcraft forever, it looks the same. I mean, the base game they haven't really tampered with that kind of cartoony wow style, but they've added modern lighting to it. And so people are just taking screenshots of beautiful sunsets and just reveling in the scenery. And it's interesting because so much of whether a game's look holds up is about the art design and the art style. And World of Warcraft, I think, has stood the test of time. And now you just add a fresh coat of paint to it. So it still has that old school World of Warcraft charm with a veneer of modern gaming graphics. And it appears to be actually a pretty perfect synthesis. So again, impressive, I think, at least for now. Now, maybe we can transition to Destiny because Bungie is sort of attempting to do something similar here with Destiny in a way. We had discussed that Bungie had previously announced that it would not be making any more content for Bungie, that it was essentially sunsetting the game. And that left us wondering, well, what does Bungie have in store then? Is it making a Bungie sequel? Nothing is confirmed. Supposedly, nothing is actually in the works. Marathons, player counts, at least, on Steam are dwindling. They have reaffirmed their commitment to marathon, their releasing PvE, their tinkering, but nothing so far has worked. And so after a huge community cry for more Destiny, and also maybe desperation because you got to make something, you have to have money coming in the door to support even a downside studio. They have not necessarily walked back the announcement that they won't be making new Destiny content, but they have revealed that they will be unvolting all the old Destiny content that has been inaccessible for years, because this was a controversial decision several years ago. Bungie just said, this has gotten too big, too unwieldy. The file sizes are huge. We are roping off some of our base game and some of our most celebrated expansions, so that every bit of Destiny content that comes out is like this message will self-destruct in X number of years. And they've even argued that they couldn't really bring back the old stuff, that it was just not feasible to make it all work, and it would be so, so much effort and labor to get it all working as a unified whole. And now evidently, perhaps out of desperation, they have decided to do that. We don't know exactly when. So I guess we could call this Destiny classic or Destiny forever, or at least that's the goal. Do you think this will work, Matt? I mean, it's going to work in some degree in the sense that Destiny players will come back to revisit some of the older content that they haven't played in a long time, or perhaps never played, but it's another case of. This is the only move that they have to make, as marathon numbers are down, and they've laid off all of the people who could make Destiny content after also declaring that they won't be making more Destiny 2 content. So how do you get them numbers up for the investors? You empty the vault. Yeah. And yeah, I hope that everyone's really excited for this and feeling like Sony's got everyone's best interests in mind as Destiny, as the Destiny fan base continues to to cry out to, I'm answered, please. To me, it's Sony being just like, no babe, I'm only going out to coffee with my ex just to get closure and say our goodbyes. That's all that really was. And it doesn't have anything to do with the fact that this may or may not have been a mistake. It's like kind of like, I keep thinking to what end? With all of this. Like, okay, great. You unfold Destiny. Clearly, people miss it and clearly, Marathon's not going anywhere. Are you just kind of testing the waters to see if you can make a Destiny 3 and not look like you have a egg on your face? After all of these years, I don't think that it's not exactly like it's. Nobody looks good in this scenario because if you backpedal even a little bit with Marathon, it looks like you've obviously screwed up and let's all be fair. They screwed up with Marathon. And when, okay, there's clearly an audience still for Destiny, what do you make of that? Do you make the, do you make a new Destiny? Do you try to trickle out more additional content for it after you said that you wouldn't? I don't know what it has to be. Obviously, they are cognizant of the fact that they misinterpreted the fact that people would be upset that Destiny went away because they've said as much. That video that they released was actually pretty illuminating and kind of more straightforward than I've ever anticipated them to be, which is like, yeah, you guys really love Destiny and we should probably keep that up for some time. Like, that's nice, but I don't think that it's going to be ultimately something that people are happy with because during its entire lifetime, I don't think anybody was truly happy with Destiny. It was more of like this toxic relationship that everybody felt like they were pot committed to that nobody was really, really that jazzed about until it was like, you know, the early days or like year two of Destiny two. I don't know. Yeah, yeah, it wasn't a divisive decision to do the vaulting and probably in retrospect the wrong one. And it was part of why I dropped off Destiny two because it just became tough to keep track of. If I missed an expansion up, it's going to go away. Oh, I didn't play that. Now I can't anymore. It felt like it was just sort of disappearing all around you as you were playing it. And I had my my destiny and destiny two phases and enjoyed them. quite a bit. So I'm not against more. But one thing I wonder about all of this is, is this aimed at the core fan base? Are you trying to bring them back to the fold? Or are you trying to reach new players? Now, I think wow is kind of trying to do both. Ideally, you have something new and you have something old and maybe wow forever as wow classic was it's a way for people who've been playing for years to go back and immerse themselves in what the game felt like back then. But it's also an opportunity for new people to hop on board and say, well, I'm hopelessly behind here. I can't just play the main game. But if I can go back to square one and it's blank slate, okay, maybe now I can get on board with world of craft. And I guess the same thing could potentially apply to destiny two. But it seems more likely that maybe you're bringing back some of the real destiny heads. But then if you're not laying the groundwork for a destiny three, something that can be a road map for the franchise, then it's hard to see where that leads. But maybe it's just, it's a scramble. It's our backs are against the wall. We have to release something here, even if it's something that we previously released and then took away. Now, Bungie, of course, used to be owned by Microsoft was the maker and original steward of Halo, which was hugely important to getting Xbox on the map, which is a good segue to our third franchise here. We got more Microsoft news. And I think we're all probably sick of discussing Microsoft layouts, but there were hundreds more this week as expected. And there are many more to come. Some other developments ninja theory could be closing after the sale of that studio fell through. We have all sorts of org chart reshuffling, rare and world's edge are reporting to Activision. Bunch of casual game makers are reporting to King makers of Candy Crush Obsidian, which is making another Fallout game will report to Bethesda. But probably the biggest news was that Halo Studios is no longer in charge of Halo, which is kind of a problem if your studio is named after the franchise that you are no longer organizing and operating. You've kind of boxed yourself in there. At this point, Halo will be developed and published by Activision makers of Call of Duty and many other franchises. And Halo Studios to the extent that it still exists will be a support team potentially assisting with Halo and other things. All in all, Xbox game studios has been reduced to just a few active studios. A lot of the acquisitions have been undone, essentially. Some of this reorganization is probably sensible. It's similar to what EA and Ubisoft have done recently or in a way, maybe what Nintendo has done for years, just putting studios that make the same franchises or similar franchises and genres under the same umbrella so that you have fewer layers of reporting and maybe fewer layers of red tape and more sort of cooperation. So, okay, that makes some sense. But as far as the future of Halo, which has fallen on tough times, obviously, after Infinite, much as I enjoyed it, fell flat. The content wasn't there. It just didn't have the life cycle that you associate with an online multiplayer Halo game. And the most recent Halo remake, which we enjoyed for what it was, didn't do gangbusters in large part because there was no online multiplayer or multiplayer, really, of any sort, which was the hook to Halo originally. So now we're going to see new creatives at the reins here. Does this make you more hopeful for Halo, Matt? No, it doesn't. It doesn't at all. I think all of these moves that Xbox have made have seemed like they are made by someone who functionally just doesn't understand the process of making video games. They are solely focused on the IP and not the people or talent making the games. It seems like they have a mission to leave no studio. There's unfucked with. They seem to have no regard for the institutional knowledge of each of these studios. They seem to think that they can crater morale and put people unfamiliar with working with each other together and have them make things they haven't necessarily made before. And they think they're going to get great results out of that. And could there be a great Halo game down the road from Activision? Like sure, Activision's a talented developer. But just broadly speaking, I just think that this is so missing the mark on how you make great games. You just, you need team synergy and you need morale and you need you know, some sense of security. No one's going to be making the best art in scenarios where their head is constantly on the chopping block and where they're, they don't know who they're going to be working with tomorrow. They don't know who's in charge of what element of what and that can change on a dime. Like this is not a good environment for producing good products, whether it's art or mechanical parts. Yeah, it's a rock and a hard place really because while Microsoft seems to be burning all goodwill with their internal development teams and making the most destabilizing decisions internally, we have Sony over here burning every bit of goodwill with their fan base and gamers in general. And nobody's really happy about either. I think that the thing that Microsoft is like attempting to do, this is my best, best faith interpretation of this is that they can easily see that like, okay, well, at least we're not Sony, at least we're not actively spitting on our fan base's face and making it so that it's almost like impossible for us to be likeable. Xbox is trying to do something and for some reason, it's every seemingly wrong business move that we can think of. The love of the studios that we all have and love are either in massive amounts of jeopardy or are reshuffled to the point to where it doesn't really mean anything like the idea that like we haven't had any sort of like meaningful splash in the Halo franchise in the better part of what a decade or anything like what was the last like memorable big thing that Halo has done. Like it's to me that has like always been the biggest fumble in like gaming franchise history to the fact that this endearing loved IP can't seem to get its feet off the ground at all in the 2020s. It is entirely indicative of how they can't seem to figure out what to do. Yeah, and I might defend this move on those grounds, not that I know whether this will work, but what they were doing before wasn't working either. So whether you lay that at Microsoft Store or Halo Studios or 343 as it was called before that they've had control of Halo for 20 years almost at this point. And yeah, the last 10 to 15 of that, it has not been bright spots. And so perhaps that has something to do with Microsoft's management, but whatever the cause was, it wasn't working. This franchise was not thriving. I don't know whether Activision will be the solution, but it at least makes more sense on paper than say moving rare or world's edge to Activision. Now Activision used to have a big portfolio of all sorts of games in genres. It wasn't just the Call of Duty Maker, but as it has evolved into the Call of Duty Maker, maybe it makes more sense to give them another first person shooter franchise, which is different from Call of Duty. But obviously one thing they've proven is that they can get those games out the door for better or worse on an annual basis. And whether they have Halo and Call of Duty going up against each other or alternate them, maybe Call of Duty actually gets to take a gap year one of these years so that a new Halo can come out. I mean, some sort of change was in order. Not sure if if this is it, but might as well try something different because whatever Halo has tried has not worked for some time. I think there's this tendency to say, OK, well, Halo studios, they put out the remake of Halo and it was good, it was fine. And there's this tendency to say, OK, well, that wasn't working. So we're going to lay off most of the people in hand, Halo to some other team. I think when we do that, we kind of overlooked, like, you know, there are people who are part of the studio who are in charge of making these decisions of charting a course forward in what the next Halo game should be. And you get all of the other people who work at the studio in the crossfire and in trouble and laid off for potentially bad decisions made by a handful or less of people. And I think that kind of gets lost sometimes. Like entire studios get kind of written off as not capable when when you have so many talented people working at any of these given studios and and it we just often just don't talk about leadership. We just talk about the studio as a whole, you know, what's that to me? And we talked about this on the Capcom on Emusha episode is you got to keep these things fresh by doing something new. you as well as something old. So yes, you can keep up the constant stream of remakes. Maybe that runs out at a certain point. You know, how many more resident evils are really ripe for remakes, but it's okay because they can keep pumping out new resident evils that are also good and please the fans, but also do something new or at least synthesize different strands from the franchise. So if you're halo, great, make halo campaign evolved, make halo two or halo three campaigns evolved, but what else you got? You got something new and that is, I think, what Blizzard has pulled off with wow for the most part. That's what remains to be seen with halo and also with bungee and destiny, but I wish them well, not just because we'd prefer for people to remain employed and keep their jobs, but also because we've spent many hours and many happy hours playing these games and franchises in the past. And I'd be happy for that to be true for the future as well. Let's talk about three brand new games, although these are also sequels. In some cases, in franchises, dating back to the 90s or in all cases, at least from developers that date back to the 90s, let's begin with control resident developed and published by Remedy Entertainment for all non-switch platforms. This is the sequel to 2019's control. And you know, I've seen this sentiment a lot. We overuse the phrase nobody's doing it like X, but I think it applies to Remedy as well as to anyone in the video game world. So we have all three of us sunk a lot of time into control resident. We have all quite enjoyed that time is what I've gathered from our Slack exchanges. Matt, you love control resident. I do. I do love control resident. I've finished it. I, there are things about it that I can and will criticize today. But overall, this is this is one of those games where there is just a real magic to it. And you're going to want to talk about all of your discoveries that you've made in it with your friends and it's just a really memorable, great experience and a really risky chance taking sequel to control, which is a game that is beloved by so many people. And it would have been just so easy to make a very safe sequel to control. And instead, what we have is a very ambitious sequel that does completely different things. And yet still pays tribute to almost everything that made the original so great. Steve, I wish you had a contrarian hot take, but my sense is that you're going to agree with Matt. I would not. I would, I would absolutely agree with Matt. And I think for all of the game's criticisms, I think it's really just a testament to, I think the philosophy of Remedy because like, I've been really trying to like nail down what their ultimate like, I've been trying to look at interviews and reviews of people that have like really tried to like hack at what Remedy wants to do as far as like their scope in the game games industry. And I can only nail it down to walking Phoenix's character in the movie signs. Are we off mirror with that movie? Of course. It's the is the is the infamous character where he was a minor league baseball phenom. He absolutely would crush the ball, but his famous line is that he wasn't patient enough and his line would be it felt wrong not to swing. And that to me is Remedy, they would rather not exist than not give their everything to a game. And there is nothing that I can't say about a Remedy game, regardless of whether or not I don't think it is a 1000% success, which by the way, this is like head and shoulders above. I want to say like maybe 95% of everything that came out this year. So like, this is in rarefied air just from from jump. But like the fact that they did not need to go this hard to a sequel to a game that was risky to begin with, that was critically successful, but like began at a bit of a rough patch because this was in the era where it did not release well for consoles. It was plagued with technical issues and we were all too ready to jump on them for doing so because we were fresh off the cyberbook 277 fiasco. And to do a sequel like this to a game that is what like not even widely beloved, but beloved to some extent and make this a sort of hack and slash character action RPG rather than a straight down the middle shooter, not in the place that it took place in and in a wildly different setting still is not only successful, but massively intriguing and engrossing. I can't think of anything more exciting because Remedy is like fearless, it's like truly fearless with the amount of things that they're willing to put in a game and just have the player take and accept at face value and enjoy. I'm wildly impressed. Yeah. You always know you're playing a Remedy game, whichever franchise it is, it's not the same people programming each of these games, but whether you're playing Backspain or Alan Wake or Control or Quantum Break or whatever it is, there is just a studio sensibility. There's that kind of, you know, this game actually has a centered camera, which in itself is sort of unusual, it's not the behind the shoulder view we're used to, but just everything else is off center about these games in a really delightful way in a very distinctive way. And yeah, they could have played it safe with the sequel, but that's just not in the studio's DNA because Control was ultimately a pretty big hit certainly by Remedy standards. You know, Remedy has been around for decades, often a critical darling, and it's games do well and win awards and everything, but you know, not selling like double digit millions totals typically, but Control was pretty big. I mean, it was bigger than Alan Wake, for instance, it was selling several million copies. And instead of just doubling down on that gameplay, which they could have done because they tried a control spin-off, right? They tried to get into online FPS, you know, PVE, FBC Firebreak, and nobody played that game last year. And, you know, they have publishing help with this investments, like Anna Perna, interactive co-published control resonance as well. So they could have said, we'll just stick with what works after the misfire that was Firebreak. And instead, yeah, they produced a sequel to Control. But it's not really all that much like Control. And there are some ways, I guess, in which that's not an improvement, but a lot of ways in which it is or at least it was a welcome refreshing change. So Matt, do you want to just lay out how this relates to Control, both in terms of story and also structure in genre? Yeah, so Control sort of centered around this character Jesse Faden, who becomes the head of the FBC, the federal Bureau of Control. And I don't want to really go into too much detail about the first game to spoil anything. But the second game here, Control Resonant, focuses on her brother, Dylan Faden, who you play as, and instead of the sort of abilities and gun weapons of control, you as Dylan Faden and Control Resonant have this sort of very weird adaptable melee weapon that you're able to kind of pick between several forms of it as a primary attack. And you can pick from several forms of a secondary attack. And you can pick from several forms of a finisher attack. And that is in addition to various abilities that you unlock throughout the game that makes the traversal in combat more interesting. But structurally, you know, you, the first game takes place entirely within the federal Bureau of Control, this very strange adapting building and this house, yes, the oldest house they call it. And this game, everything kind of spills out of the oldest house into Manhattan. And so what you're left with is a game that I kind of was thinking a lot about Spider-Man when I was playing it just based on here we are in New York, we're playing a fairly open world melee action game with very kind of fun, loose, airy traversal. And we are taking icons off the map. And so I didn't expect at all to have a Spider-Man feel to this control game. But I think in some ways, it definitely does. And I was a little bit worried at first when I thought it was going to kind of be like an open world game with icons on a map and, you know, here you are looking for satellite dishes to power up to power up a tower that will unlock, you know, more icons on your map. Like these are somewhat well-trodden, like gameplay mechanics of an open world genre. And yet, remedy still fine. find ways to make that not a detraction from it at all. They just find the fun in everything. And there are so many like little discoveries to come upon in the world that you're exploring. That definitely adds a nice element that you didn't really have in control. Like you would obviously stumble upon cool stuff, but finding them out in the open world is just a, it's a whole different thing somehow. And I think that it's really great that Resonant took this new format and is keeping things fresh, especially because like the uphill battle of a sequel, especially to something like control, where there's all this mystery and you're getting answers throughout control. And by the end of it, you feel like you've got a significant amount of answers. There's just a lot of what's going on. Like the cat's out of the bag with control, the series by the time Resonant comes around. So some of that magic is inherently like a little bit lost going into control, Resonant. There isn't as much to discover of how this world is functioning. And I don't think that this is a better game than control. And I don't think that it hits that kind of mystery element quite as hard, but I think they've done damn near everything. And they can do to keep it as fresh as possible and to keep expanding the lore in ways that feel interesting and not just like a continuation of plot. Do you feel the same Steve? - Yeah, I agree with you wholeheartedly that like the biggest strength that the control had was its element of discovery with this new world that is the oldest house and the vibe that they were kind of giving us with this game. Like it was so like David Lynchian meets ex files, meets like 50 other like science fiction and genre mashups that we all love into this amazing package. And when you have control, Resonant, it's not so much about the way that this world is like so weird and so alien, but it's contained in this weird pocket dimension of a building that has all of these like insane nooks and crannies. But like when this cataclysm like leaks out of that building and makes this massive destruction thing, you're kind of as a person observing that story, it constantly looking to fix things and put out fires and not really understand it more so much as solve it and fix it, which is fun, but it's kind of against what that first control game was. And I'm again like Matt would agree, I'm not opposed to that, but it takes a little bit of the edge of that mystery out of it. Now, as I say that all of the fun elements that make control and this so full of life and personality are still here. Both of us, I Matt, you'll agree here was like the second that we kind of like got our fair shake of the open world, we immediately started hitting side quests and the weird shit just kept pouring and pouring and pouring. Like you got a fun little like pattern recognition game where you're trying to rescue a woman in a pocket dimension via this like last taxi or whatever. And there's a bunch of other like floating bits of like like inathema that apparently are just like named Chris or something that you have to defeat. Like the residents are basically these eldritch horrors that have normal person names that you just get to read about. And it's so fun and full of personality that I can't help but love it. But I think the biggest strength that this game comes to that's, that makes it different from control is Dylan and this combat system because the ideas that they give us with like the surface weapon in control versus forgive me what the original name of Dylan's weapon is called. The aberrant, I think, right? The aberrant, yeah, it feels so tactile. The way that you get to use it and the way that remedy is so obsessed with demonstrating the technical in their games where you see little bits of the aberrant like sort of like splinter off when you hit an enemy or when it transforms like parts of it just fall to the ground. All of those things that you can kind of notice that this studio is making the effort to give to you makes it all that immersive and makes it all the more engrossing when you actually get to progress in this world when you're like, oh my god, I get another power up. What can this thing do now? What can Dylan actually do that Jesse is kind of limited to now? And the story, I think, is just as fun as the last time around. But it just has a little bit of a lack of edge. Ben, did you have any sort of like reservations about like, is it going to recapture the magic or are you kind of along for a brand new ride? I am. I was initially skeptical about Dylan. I don't know that I found him quite as compelling a protagonist as Jesse, but ultimately warmed to him and found him pretty personable because in the first game he's just kind of, you know, he's like been in a coma. I mean, he's just been in prison. He's been confined. You don't know much about him. And so at first it seems like, well, is there a lot of depth to this guy? I don't know if there's depth exactly, but he's easy to root for. And I like how at first he's treated as this monster by everyone you encounter. And you sort of have to prove to them that no, I'm here to help. I'm not causing all of this havoc. I think there's a lot to like about the gameplay. I wouldn't describe it as a true open world. It's sort of expansive zones, I would say. But there is a lot of wandering around and it's not so linear. And you can do side quests and choose your own adventure a little bit. I couldn't help but compare and contrast with Wolverine. Just because I played Wolverine right before this. And that comparison is not kind to Wolverine, which I mean, we don't need to pile on anymore. I guess then people have piled on already. And this should be more varied than Wolverine. It's about twice as long for one thing. But Wolverine, there's been all this talk about. Well, can they patch it? Can they update it? I was joking about how they didn't do away with the fart gas or make it optional. But it's just a little more diffuse fart gas now. It's a little harder to see. That doesn't fundamentally change anything about the game because you can't really. It's not like Marvel's Wolverine. The issue was that it was buggy or broken or something. It's just, you know, people were a little let down. By the way, it was structured, at least some people. And I don't think that's something you can fix after the fact with some sort of cyberpunk glow up. Yeah. Once that fart is out, it's out. Yeah. Yeah. It's, you can't put it back in the butt, you know, so they say that is always fresh. Yeah. You can't put it in the fart back in the butt. Wolverine is, is better than a fart, by the way. I know that way that it is suffered a lot of abuse, but we had some fun with that game. You just have to know what it is going in, but it lacks that spark of a remedy game. And even if you're not like a remedy, lore master in your, you know, doing the cork board and you're just drawing connections across the remedy verse and everything, there is that unique sort of, yes, it's lynchian, you know, it's, it's like somewhat unsettling. It's weird. You never quite understand. That's the thing. It is funny. It is funny. It's, it's goofy. Yeah. There's kind of a Zach Kregger thing going on here where even if you're not into like weird surrealism or something, it's grounded enough by the humor, the way that Kregger's horror films are grounded by humor, that anyone can enjoy them. And so even if I would have a hard time summarizing or, you know, providing an accurate synopsis of the story of control resonant, like in great detail and depth, if I had to explain the hiss and altered world events and all the rest of it, I'm still pretty captivated just because there's always going to be some funny punchline around the bend. You know, it's like, there are a lot of, you know, audio logs and recordings and files sprinkled around this world, maybe too many, but I always, maybe too many, maybe too many, but I always felt obligated to read them because every like eighth one would make me laugh. You know, there'd be like a memo about how there were hiss imposter's possessing a tissue box or a toilet or something, you know, it would just kind of like take the piss out of its own lore to stop it from being too pretentious or anything. And I just, I really like that aspect of it. So, you know, the traversal is fun though. As you said, Matt, like, you know, you've got your, your jumping and your double jumping and you're sort of levitating or elevating, almost like beast of reincarnation where you're just like jumping up directly and here you can hover, but then there's also air dashing and double air dashing and also dashing on the ground. And so you feel really flexible and agile and mobile. And so that's sort of a joy. And the combat, you know, it's, it's fairly basic, I guess, as, as combat systems go. We were talking about this on Slack, but the absence of any kind of parry mechanic is striking just especially after Animusha, but after everything since Sekiro, you know, we've talked about how we're at peak parry, yeah, Wolverine as well. Again, this is an example of control and remedy just saying nope. Not us. They did say that they tested a parry mechanic and they found that it slowed things down too much because with parrying, you're just sort of inherently responsive. You're on your back foot, you're waiting for the monster to make the first move, whereas this is more propulsive. Now, ultimately, there is a lot of button mashing and, you know, it's kind of repetitive melee attacks and especially early on, I found it a bit difficult or frustrating because you just don't have many moves or anything. It's one of these games where you get health when you kill something, and so you have to keep being aggressive. It's like the best defense is a good offense, and the only way through is out or the only way out is through. And so you just have to kind of keep hacking and slashing away. And there were some encounters that I did many times because, you know, I was just sort of mobbed. But on the whole, like, even if it's not great or inspired or unique in isolation, it kind of felt fresh just because of how everything else has been so parry based. So even though for the first hour or three, I felt a phantom limb where I would just kind of keep pressing L1 to parry. And it was like, wait, I can't. What do I do here? Yeah. But ultimately, I was kind of glad to just break out of the parrying modes for a moment. It's good that they've done that because because really the feel of the combat is fast and it is, it is, there's a motion to it that would have been compromised if they had parries in this game. I do think that like, among my criticisms of the game, the combat system is my greatest one. It feels good. Don't worry about that. Like it, the combat feels good. But I think there are a few things wrong with it. One, the enemies are too spongy. The damage output is not properly tuned in this game. And I don't know if they just got themselves, again, this is not Remedy's wheelhouse. This, this sort of may lay fast-paced combat. But I don't know if the situation where the various builds, because you can have, you know, just off the off the bat with all of your different options for primary, secondary, and finisher attack, there are a lot of different ways that you can kind of put together your combat, all of which will just result in you pretty much just slamming the square button, occasionally hitting the triangle button at the start. But I may perhaps some of those combinations do a lot more damage than others. I particularly felt like my combo was ended up being fairly weak. There were just what bosses that just ended up taking me forever just by the fact that their health bar just wasn't going down from stuff I was doing. And this is both before and after additional abilities are added, which it is good that they have other abilities that inflict sort of statuses that interact with each other. There's a fire mechanic and a mold mechanic that that work pretty well together and a few others that I want spoiled. So that adds a good amount, those additional things that you unlock eventually. But at the jump, yeah, you really are just in a wolverine-like manner, really just hitting a lot of square and some triangle. And the damage output just isn't good enough you'd spend too long on things. So I actually, and I never like adjusting sliders in games, I really will do everything I can to play a game on a default setting and not change course at all. I really actually recommend that even haters like me go into the settings and up the damage output from its its at 100. I think you should up it to at least 150. And you can get that thing well up to like, I don't know, it goes that slider goes way up like 400. I think remedy obviously did like did that on purpose because they know that the balancing was like if not off like again, not in their wheelhouse. And I commend them for like not only their accessibility options in that regard, but like there are a lot of things that you can tweak because I think my biggest criticism is while the combat, the enemies in the combat are quite spongy. I think that actually might be too much combat in this game because I find myself like every maybe like 200 feet. I have like a couple dozen enemies to fight and then move on to the next thing. And if they weren't if they weren't as spongy, it would it wouldn't be as annoying, but that's what made me turn that up in the first place. And those those all respond when you kill one of the biggest bosses of the game. All of the enemies respond. And perhaps there is a better system for that. Yeah. And this is again, my like credit. This is probably the most grace that I'll give a game that's worthy of all of these criticisms because of the fact that like I got to play this in an early build in summer games Fest. And what I got to sample as far as gameplay was pretty much like the first hour of the game up until you are given the open world and you fight one boss and then that's it. And the degree of changes that I felt from that first build that was like I want to say three to four months ago to now is night and day. And not only were they actively like I could see the fact that they were actively tinkering and figuring this thing out. I have absolutely no hesitation to say that they will get this and fine tune this likely either in coming patches or at minimum whatever venture they choose to do next because again, like this is not their wheelhouse. And I think they did a very commendable job in this instance, but I think the biggest biggest criticism is the fact that they they really were in love with what they had. And they might have just given it a bit too much of a good thing. Yeah. If you do like adjusting sliders in menus, this is the game for you because I've never seen more adjustable sliders just everything like the speed of enemy project dials, you know, if you want to bullet time yourself, you can. And it's kind of a difficulty setting also an accessibility setting. So I applaud it. I'd rather have more customization options than I need than too few. It's not for me personally. Like you said, Matt, constitutionally, I do like to just play the default partly because if I'm covering something, I want to just know what the developers intended and be able to tell people what the default setting is. But also because I just would rather not have to metal with that stuff and just have it be perfectly tuned. So that's the only downside. I think if this catches on and suddenly you can just essentially mod console games yourself or tweak every setting, that's great if it makes it more accessible. I hope though that companies don't use that as an excuse not to tune and balance it themselves and just say, well, players can figure it out themselves because if I can, that's nice. But I'd rather not have to. I'd rather just have it feel great out of the box. Sure. I'm a kind of of two minds of that because like what is easy mode and hard mode and like ultra challenge mode, if not to just make it yourself because yes, like the the developers intent of making a different challenge for difficulty selections of, you know, going higher or lower is part of sort of like trusted vision of how you could be enjoying the game or should be quote unquote, but I'm not really philosophically opposed to quote unquote, making my own difficulty because of the fact that that that principle already exists with generic difficulty settings in general. I like it's an interesting debate. I think that that's something that can be possibly phased out in the future. Like cheat codes have kind of gone the way of the dodo now. Maybe difficulty sex settings go the way of the dodo because of the fact that we can now change and modify things about games. So Willie nilly. Maybe. Yeah, I just I worry about decision fatigue when I'm confronted with with a menu with that many options. You know, I appreciate the choice, but I'd rather have you figure those things out for me and just feel good about the decisions that you served up to me on a platter. Yes, absolutely. And and again, like, I don't want to go into the sliders ever. And the thing that that that made me that made me do it is not because I was like, oh, these fights are taking too long, which they were, but I was willing to suffer through that. But I got to one particular boss fight very late in the game where, you know, and and maybe there was something I was missing. Again, we played before release. I can't really go ask other people around, but it seemed to me like this particular boss had a it had some I don't want to spoil anything, but it had some sort of effect where essentially you were slowly being exposed to this status effect that if you were fully impacted by it, you die and it's and it's and it's the end, right? And I was I played that boss. I think four or five times. And I essentially I tried every every tool that I had all of the different kinds of status effects, all of the the weapons. I tried multiple different things, all these interactions, everything I could think of. And I couldn't come anywhere near being able to do enough damage in the time provided even escaping being, you know, hit with additional status effect. Like I was doing a really good job. And I was not able to escape that death eventually. And that is when I went into the sliders and said, okay, I'm going to turn the damage up now. And I turned the damage up and turns out after playing that fight four or five times, I did it immediately because the only thing stopping me was my damage output. So that's a big difference between like a preference to like have the combat be quicker and something that that was almost a little bit game breaking for me, right? Yeah, the bosses were cooler conceptually. I think that they were in practice. Some of them were fun, but I like the design of them. Sometimes more than I like the experience of fighting them. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, absolutely. Just a few other minor things I wanted to praise and also complain about and I'll just rattle them off here. First of all, I'm always wary of when a game forces you to choose something before you can really test it out, you know, you have to commit to a class or a weapon or whatever it is. And sometimes you kind of know what you're getting into. I was worried at first because you have to choose an aberrant variant before you can really try it. But I was relieved that respect is is easy and just customizing the way combat works and you're load out and everything very low barriers to entry there. So you can customize it. But not free. Not free. Yeah, it's true. Yeah, also appreciated the incredible control recap on the main menu. Yeah, you know, I find that so few games do this and it takes so long for games to come out. And very rarely do they have a previously on, which we're accustomed to on TV, even if we watched the last episode a week ago. And maybe that's because people just expect, although go to YouTube and someone will have made, you know, a cutscene compilation or here's the story so far. And yeah, usually that suffices. But I appreciated that it was in this game and that it wasn't half-assed because sometimes games will do that. And you know, it's almost like they don't want to spoil anything that happened in the first game. And so it doesn't actually tell you anything. This was like a several minutes long, pretty thorough recap of control a game that came out like seven years ago. So I appreciated the refresher. That was really nice. A couple other things. Well, we said, you know, probably too many files scattered around the world. Maybe they got a little too high on their supply there. But I do like that the menu system is pretty streamlined. I found it good, you know, when you're browsing through your archives and looking up the archives and the info and the intel you've collected on various characters and everything. It's pretty accessible. So I thought that was nice. A couple of things I must complain about though. This is not unique to control. But we have to stop with the voices coming out of my controller speakers. I cannot tolerate this. Oh, I'm sure that I've straight up muted those controllers from like the from the main PlayStation menu. I'm done with that. I do not want my DualSense to speak to me, especially if it's just echoing what is coming through my speakers, which is the case in this game. It's one thing. If okay, you want to simulate, you know, someone's talking to me on a radio or something and it's coming out of my controller. That can be kind of cool. But here it's just like I'm being bombarded by the tinny sound that is already coming out of my speakers. And then it probably kills the battery life, which is not that great to begin with. So instantly I turned that off. And also as someone who is married to a woman named Jesse who spells her name, J-E-S-S-I-E. I resent that Jesse Faden spells it with an E at the end and no I J-E-S-S-E. Just because my Jesse, her name is so often misspelled by people who don't realize that typically the the female form is IE and the male form is E. And I think that's done with a purpose in control. It's not just those fins. They don't know how we spell Jesse for a woman usually. I think it's meant to signify, you know, it's like Jesse and Dylan are both sort of unisex names and maybe they're kind of two parts of a hole and there's a duality going on there. And then there's some like mirror stuff going on in the first game. You just talked me into me. You just talked me into feeling like you were wrong. So yeah, really you're in the world of the oldest house. We're going to worry about the conformities of gender, Ben. I know very, very sensitive of you. Physics are broken in the oldest house, but I'm more worried about spelling. I mean, I am an editor. This is on brand for me. I think it was done for a thematic purpose and intentionally and thoughtfully. However, it still perpetuates the misspelling of my wife's name, which is very routine. And for that reason, I can tell you, unplayable wife guy over here just standing up for my Jesse and imploring remedy to add an eye there before the e. Anyway, it's a really good game. And it's it's really fun. And if you've played control, if you've played any remedy game before you have some sense of what you're going for here. And it's not for everyone. And it can be an acquired taste. But I think gameplay wise, this is actually pretty accessible by remedy standards. And there's just a lot to like here. And the board, which Steve did such an expert impression of in our intro, just hilarious. Like, you know, the dialogue, the speech, the text, the way that the board speaks to you is endlessly entertaining. And it's also it's also that playful use of language that the board had. Like it was like clever and neat in control, but like the fact that one word that they say could mean like three different things. And it emphasizes every single one. It's like the player hero lay about is like meaning of like this is wonderful. Like it's it's so like it has so much personality and like ingenuity in the way that it chooses to characterize this world. Not just the board, but like everything around it. Like hearing some of the like FBC, like interactions of just like the normal like goons or like field workers that they have of like they're just like two guys are just staring at this like gravity anomaly. And it's just like how long do we have left before lunch? And it's like lunch was five hours ago. And like, all right. Well, I guess we'll keep staring. And then we just go back to the wall. Like this, like there's you didn't need to do that. And it's it's so so so well written and as such brimming with personality in games that are kind of devoid of that. And I'm so so welcoming of that. It like it elevates any possible complaint that I could possibly have with either the combat or how we have too much of a good thing in, you know, all of the enemy varieties and stuff like that. I just I love what this game is serving up. All right. We triple played control resonant. We'll spend less time on our next two games because only two of us played each of them a piece. It's another late September. So that must mean it's time for another Silent Hill spin off Silent Hill F, which was covered on button mash came out last September 25th. So here we are September 24th with a new Silent Hill spin off Silent Hill townfall developed by screen burn interactive and published, of course, by Konami, along with Anna Perna interactive co-publishing for PS5 and Windows. And you all know famously I love all things survival horror and Silent Hill, especially with a side of stealth. If I'm just creeping around and scared out of my wits, I mean, that's the sweet spot for me. You know, we just need to take care of him in here and we'll have everything. Just a card battling mechanics. That's the only thing that could make this more up my alley, especially first person survival horror with breakable weapons. I mean, just all the favorites really, every Venn diagram that I am at the center of Silent Hill townfall just made to order, hold me back. And yet I selflessly sacrificed and donated my code to you because we received two pre-release codes and only two pre-release codes. And so I stood aside and I said no, the Silent Hill heads Steve and Matt, I will let them have their fun. And so I have not yet played Silent Hill townfall. I'll have to wait for my review as the survival horror. You're not gonna play it. No, look, I mean, maybe I'd be more likely to play it if it were not now and the Boss Russia video games, but fair. Even so, I was not so sorry to say, you know what, you guys, you have fun and let me know how it was. So let me know how it was Silent Hill townfall. Matt, what did you make of the game? Oh boy, this is the real doozy. This one, my experience with this was very unique. I had quite a whirlwind with this one. I think about, I don't know, eight hours in or something. I may be a little less than that. I hopped on Slack to talk with Steve about how little I was enjoying this game and to rant to rant profusely about things that I didn't like about this game. And I will say that by the end of this game, where I'm at now is that I think that this is a great game. Just gonna get past the first eight hours or so. It was a while turnaround for me and I'm happy to get into that later and explain why. But it was a bizarre experience for me. I don't usually have a complete turnaround on it and I'm curious to know it Steve what's your top view of of so I'll express how would I express your concerns for you because I like I have your I understand your concerns quite well actually because I think the best thing that this game has going for it is everything that a Silent Hill game to me needs and it's like incredibly good sense of setting and vibes and like a very intriguing story yeah I said in 90's Scotland here and Fox St Amelia is the town of course Fox yeah and this game looks fucking incredible this game is an incredibly well-made well-produced the sound design is immaculate I think the the score is acting oh my god score is sensational some of the best like this year easily it's so great it's so added and again very much like control resident there are things that I mean well actually not like control resident because control while control resident gave us too much of a good thing and understood the assignment but ultimately missed the mark there are some parts of Silent Hill that you expressed to me Matt that they just straight up didn't understand and the primary use of these of the game mechanic that we have here is either like exploration puzzle solving and not so much combat but stealth will say with occasional melee combat and that while ultimately is I can admit a bit clunky it the positives vastly outweigh any negatives because of the fact that the way that this story progresses you run into a lot more enemies and you run into a lot more encounters that given the tools that this game throws at you while amazing and immersive don't exactly lead to you playing the game that you want to play Madam I'm missing the mark here the only thing I'll take issue is that is that I think they fully understand what a Silent Hill game is my my main criticism is that they they haven't innovated on uncertain elements as certain elements of this game feel wildly antiquated and and I'll just get into it right now basically the the first half of the game the the gameplay is pretty much entirely stealth and avoidant of enemies and you don't have a lot of offense to dole out and that's that's fine in a Silent Hill game that is there's nothing wrong with that on on paper however it just felt like a slog to get through about a 50 foot area the the sneaking that you'd have to do would sometimes just take way too long now they have this mechanic in the game where you have this little kind of like portable TV that they call the CR TV don't get on me about that at that acronym because I know it's it should be CR TV don't start don't start this is your tm machine to be on it this is your Jesse is spelled wrong yeah I will defend my wife CR TV so basically the way that this thing works is you hold up this TV and it acts as kind of like an x ray visions you can kind of see where the enemies are around you which at first you're like okay that'll be a new mechanic for the Silent Hill that's that's pretty cool let's let's do that but you quickly find that one it takes out a lot of the element of surprise you constantly know where all the enemies are and two what ends up happening is is you just end up staring at this screen watching silhouettes of animation cycles just waiting for them to move out of the way you spend a wild amount of time just looking at this tiny screen on your screen just waiting just waiting and if they take a turn and come at you all of a sudden maybe you have to redo an entire section that took you five minutes and and a minute and a half to two of that was waiting around and man it it it just is a slog and the tension is diffused and so you know you can sometimes wait in they have areas where you can hop into like a closet or an open door to hide from enemies which is you know not a new thing but find cool the thing is like you can every time you pop into something to hide what will happen is the nearest enemy will all the sudden decide oh I got to check this room and it'll stand in front of that door that you're hiding and be like oh can't really find him when you after a while you know that like if you didn't get in that closet that enemy was not coming in that room to vamp in front of the the like you can you can just kind of feel the game design and and yeah like I said yeah it just did you have this sort of experience Steve too with this first half of the game the early hours I think you also described it as what if or this game is for people who played Resident Evil Requiem and thought the grace sections grace was overpowered grace wasn't weak enough you play as grace and then a weaker grace right yeah oops all grace was I think my which again I don't I'm fine with that because silent hill to me never was the Resident Evil comp that everybody like inaccurately makes it to be it is not a power fantasy it is not an action oriented franchise that is okay I don't mind playing as like weak or like non action hero protagonist for the sake of the gameplay that they're giving me I I I don't think that the thing that like you say like kind of diffused all of the tension in your like moment to moment encounters was like to me the thing that I just kind of surrendered myself to in the narrative dissonance of a silent hill game and it's that like these are these are weak characters and not so much we characters but this is a terrifying situation and that these things will kill you in an instant the moment they see you I was willing to have that leeway because of the fact that it more or less is more set dressing in between me walking around all of these incredible environments to solve great puzzles and get little interesting bits and nuggets of this story and the the combat or like the moment to moment interact encounters that just the game is the what you're doing in the game is yeah it's just like it's not the most compelling thing and like I would be more forgiving of that if we didn't just have silent hill f that was a lot more competent in those things yeah while having a very good story I just think that you just have an amazing story with this and I'm just willing to forgive kind of everything that it might get very wrong I am too and I have been shit talking this game for the the best over many minutes right and rightfully so had you come to Jesus moment yeah that's right okay so about halfway through you you do get some weapons to speak of right again not not gonna spoil anything but there are some some segments that change up the gameplay to make it more interesting I always think the silent hill is at its best when you do have offensive capabilities but they're limited so you have to pick and choose when to engage and when not to engage and that that that brings a lot of tension of of you know survival whereas the first half of the game is it's just so much stealth and avoidance and and I like at most you know you can throw a bot man I hope you like throwing bottles in games because it's a necessary bottle yeah but about halfway through the game you do get some weapons that that make for a lot more of a serviceable gameplay experience I was no longer feeling like it was a slog and and more importantly about halfway through the game you start getting answers to some questions and the way that this game managed to save itself for me is that I think that this is a not only a fantastic story um and and a a a good subject matter that I won't really get into for the series to go into at this moment in time but I also think that it is incredibly well told and I think that the the pacing of the reveals once you start getting them is great and I think that it does it's still like silent hill at its best leave some stuff up to interpretation but you start getting those secrets and they all come together and you understand what's been going on and when I booted up for new game plus started from the beginning I was like holy shit look at all of these like clues in plain sight the whole time that I didn't really put together and I I just think that yeah if you're someone who's about you know games as a storytelling medium I I just think this is fantastic and and I'm I'm gonna remember this story long before I remember stay long after I I forget how much I was staring at my CRTV screens and they're hiding in the closet while enemies vamped. - No. - But I expect that a lot of people won't have the patience to get through that. That slog section of the game. And I also, I liked the puzzles in this game. I personally thought that they were a little better than Silent Hill F's puzzles. But I know that there is a large contingent of people online who have played this game who have felt that some of the puzzles, especially one in particular, was like irredeemably obtuse. - Yes. So I have not played it, but I've watched that. - I am a puzzle. - Like you both complained. - Yeah. - So I don't know. Maybe that didn't hit me quite as hard. But I get the complaint with it. There is that puzzle that people are complaining about. It's sort of like you have to basically interpret symbols and that's a very objective endeavor, like interpreting what a symbol means, right? And if you happen to interpret in the way that the devs wanted sooner rather than later, that's gonna be very helpful and who's to say like why you would have done that versus someone not and I don't know. So the puzzles are perhaps yet another sticking point. - Yeah, from what I've watched, I think probably the suspense intention would be maintained for me just because I would be scared senseless or jump scared senseless, CRTV or no CRTV. But I think since I did play Silent Hill F and that was on the more action oriented side of the Silent Hill spectrum, which by the way, people praised the combat in that game and having played it, I thought, boy, if this is good Silent Hill combat, I don't want to play bad Silent Hill combat. And so this may not be for me, but I'm glad that you came around and that it won you over, Matt. And I like that you can have different manifestations of Silent Hill and we probably went too long without any new Silent Hill installment. I mean, in that way, you know, it was an eternity. Now we're on an annual release schedule with Silent Hill and maybe there's a happy medium. Maybe we don't need Silent Hill on the Call of Duty schedule or on the every 12 years or 14 or whatever it was. But you know, I guess I'm glad that people who want Silent Hill are getting a steady supply of it now. And whether it needs to be part of the main line series or a spin off, I mean, I guess that's as much about the protagonist and the story as it is about the gameplay 'cause it seems like this is a Silent Hill game more or less and so far as if this is some wacky experiment in, oh, this is way off the beaten path of Silent Hill except for the fact that it's in Scotland. So yeah, I mean, if anything, my criticisms are that it's so Silent Hill that they didn't evolve it enough in terms of their gameplay, right? That's that weird middle ground that the fan base of Silent Hill that I've observed has had because it's like, oh my God, we all want to recreate Silent Hill too. That mad, oh my God, wasn't that game so great? And a lot of things refer back to Silent Hill throughout this game's lineage and the farther that they've kind of gotten away from it in like, you know, the recent decades and years past like it's gotten more and more off the mark. So I can see why games like F and this are kind of more reminiscent of the things that made too so great. But frankly, I think the biggest revelation that we can come of this is the fact that Konami is listening to these studios and developers with these pitches and acknowledging what makes them great because of the fact, like the fact that we have the firm person in this, you know? Yes. And it's like, and it's incredibly refreshing to get to see all of these studios have their different takes on this franchise because all of these people have had great ideas for a very long time. And Konami's just like, yeah, we'll just see control to the people that really love this stuff and see what they have. And if this is the chance for that going forward, I would take a million more. Townfield and a million more. Yeah, I don't want a mainline, I don't even want a mainline Silent Hill because what makes out these games so great to me is that each of them has a something that they're trying to explore as far as trauma and guilt and regret and fear. And I think they each have this sort of thematic take on that that is so strong. And if you were to try and force sort of like recurring characters into it, game after game, you'd really lose that. So I love these little forays, these little explorations into various motifs. And again, I have a lot of chrisms of this game. I'm so thrilled that it exists. And there's still so much of it. Like you mentioned the environmental design too. Oh my god, you walk into groups and they feel so lived in. It's really, it's really. And when you pair that with the visuals, the environmental design, the score, there is so much magic there. Like, yeah, there's just, there's a lot to love. There's a lot to, and there's a lot to hate. And I still can't find myself to do so. Because again, like the craziest thing was like in those beginning sections of that game, like the environmental design is so incredible that like I'm like, I shouldn't be in somebody's house. I'm in somebody's house. I shouldn't be like this. I don't live here. Why am I here? Like it gave me that feeling a little bit. And I'm like, I feel scared to be somewhere that I shouldn't be. And I think that, that to me is something that like, I don't care how bad your combat is. If you give me that feeling while playing a game, like you've sold me, it's wonderful. I'm glad you guys found a lot to love. I'm not Mr. Silent Hill F. Nor am I Mr. F Silent Hill. It's, it's a bad problem. It's a, it's a nice, nice, nice. It's not you. It's my cowardly constitution when it comes to games. But let's move on to our last game. Last, but not least, that we probably played at least Fire Emblem fortunes we've co-developed by intelligent systems and Nintendo and published by Nintendo exclusively for Switch 2. Now, if you want to pick up Fire Emblem fortunes we which came out last week, there's plenty to play. You can play this game for longer than control resonant and Silent Hill put together twice. But we have not yet had a chance to do that. We requested but didn't receive pre-release codes because Nintendo works in mysterious ways. So we have just dabbled a bit Matt and I while also juggling all these other games that we're talking about today or we'll be talking about soon. This game has gotten a very warm reception. The longtime Fire Emblem fans are sated. They are happy. They have gotten exactly what they wanted. I'm not a longtime Fire Emblem fan. I don't know if you are, Matt, it's such an interesting series because I mean, it goes back decades almost as long as many of Nintendo's just flagship cherished franchises. And it is one or has been one of them in some parts of the world. But of course, here in the West and the US, it took a while to be adapted. And there were quite a few years there where if an American player was aware of Fire Emblem, it was probably because they played as Martha or Roy in Super Smash Brothers. And that was about as far as the Fire Emblem awareness went. But that changed ultimately. And the series has kind of caught on over here and is trying to build on that popularity. After some of the success of Fire Emblem Awakening and then Fire Emblem 3 houses in 2019. And the most recent, I guess, was engage a few years ago. This is as big as ever, as good as ever. Certainly when it comes to the critical reception. This is a game that you could easily sink a hundred hours into by all accounts. And I can see that not having sunk nearly that many into it. Matt, we played the prologue. And then we sort of dipped into at least the first chapter of this game because it's structured in an interesting way where there's a lot of time travel and time manipulation. And there are four heroes that you are trying to sort of coach to get to the capital city for the big games. And then it all comes together. And everything is woven together much as in the title. And so you basically have four games in one, if not five. And you can go to this central hub area. And you can just check in on any of these four main characters in those timelines. And the goal is that you sort of steer them to all come together ultimately. And I mean, those are just full-fledged games. And so I tried out each of them and just got sort of a sense of what they were like. And they're very different characters, written very differently, different kinds of gameplay, and then linked by your main characters and party in the present. But you know, you're kind of constantly just like catching up with characters you've neglected. can play them in tandem. You can kind of play them sequentially. It's choose your own adventure, but it's a very rich and deep story and RPG worlds with all that goes along with that. So if you've played a Fire Emblem before, then you probably have some sense of what to expect. If you haven't, you're about to dive into the deep end here. And so, you know, even if we had gotten pre-release codes, it would have been tough to put 100 hours into this thing, given everything else that's coming out. But if you are soleus, switch to owner, well, control resident and Silent Hill Townfall are not available to you. And GTA VI won't be either. And so if you want to just devote, at least your next month and a half or so until Ocarina comes out to a single game, Fire Emblem fortunes we've will more than fill that description and probably last a little longer than that if you wanted to. So Matt, what are your early impressions? Well, under normal circumstances, I feel like I would have been, you know, 70, 80 hours deep into this game already. Yeah, I like it. The fact that I purchased a physical copy of this and it just sat on my table for, I don't know, a week plus is just unfathomable, but there's so much we've been playing and that we can't even talk about yet. We haven't had enough time with this yet. But I will say I'm someone who played the ever living crap out of three houses. I completely finished that game. I played a lot of engage but fell off eventually. I played a good amount of a GTA Fire Emblem back in the day. And when I got my A.O.I. in Thor, I finally dove into Awakening's Awakening Awakening's. Is it S? Is it plural? I don't, it must be plural. More is more in this series. Yeah. So it's going to be more than one Awakening. Actually, no, though, it was Awakening. I just want to see. They've learned a lot. So I like, I'm a big, like, I'm not a big Fire Emblem fan, but I really like it. And my biggest thing with the series is always like, my biggest challenge with the series is like, oh, man, I hope I can finish this one. I hope I don't fall off this game. I really hope I don't fall. Because they are dauntingly large. And I will say that the writing in these games can vary. And it's never been like fully fantastic to me in any incarnation. So there's always this worry of, am I going to fall off this? I'm never really worried about the combat being bad or anything. I find that this series, I'm someone who likes tactical RPGs. And I've always found Fire Emblem's combat to be good. And so far, I'm finding exactly the same. I have just scratched the surface of what the combat system is in this game, I assume. But it seems entirely competent, as you would expect. I think the thing that hopefully will keep me from falling off of this game is that it is hands down the best looking and sounding Fire Emblem game that I've ever played. It feels decidedly next gen to me as a Fire Emblem game, which is very exciting. And I've seen a lot of criticisms about the writing of this game online. And again, I'm not 50, 60, 70 hours deep in this. But I will say as someone who's just well into Act 1 here, I haven't found anything that has turned me off, particularly about the story. I haven't been skipping dialogue or anything. So I'm very optimistic about my experience so far. And I'm very eager to get back to it and keep going with it, which is something I was worried that given all the other options and things that we're playing right now, I wouldn't feel. And I'm excited that I do feel that draw to it so far. What about you? Yeah, it's hard to get on board with something like Fire Emblem that dates back to the NES in 1990, because you're looking at something that has 17 mainline games and several spin-offs as well. And didn't even come to the West until it was seven games deep, I think, with the blazing blade in 2003, which was just, I guess, called Fire Emblem here. But even if you aren't going to go back to the beginning and catch up on all the lore, you can just start here. And it does tell its own story. And you don't necessarily need to know anything. And I thought, even as a Fire Emblem Noob, it was a really effective introduction and difficulty ramp up. And I did not feel overwhelmed by systems or anything. I thought it very clearly laid out the combat, which, of course, will get more complex. But the basics, granted I had warmed up with Star Wars Zero Company, I guess, so I was in a turn-based tactics mood. But the tutorials, I thought, were not just burdensome. It wasn't like one of these fighting games where you're doing an hour-long tutorial and you're just spent, by the time the game starts. It was actually-- It was actually-- Yeah, it was pretty sparing. And just, OK, we'll show you the ropes, the basics. And then you'll learn as you go. And I thought the introduction to the worlds worked in the same way. It has two difficulty levels, only two normal and hard, so easy players need not apply, I guess. But also, casual and classic, which is sort of very much like the Zero Company, do you want permadeath or not? Although this, I think, is more forgiving than that, even. It's not like Zero Company, because if a character dies, they're still around. They're still in the world. They're still part of the story, which was the magic trick that Zero Company pulled off to tell an engaging story, even though lots of characters could be removed from the board at an end. Yeah. And so this isn't quite like that. And maybe that's understandable, because we're talking about a 100-hour story here with almost like a sweet-cut-and-size cast. I would've had a lot of weaving. Yeah, you have to just a Trump amount of weaving, I think, would have been required. Just like you're constantly recruiting characters, there's all sorts of different modes. There's the Zero Company-esque. We're back at base, and we're just hanging out and bonding with our party members and soaking up some of the atmosphere of the world. And then there are Dungeons, which are very old-school JRPG style, contained areas, and kind of a stripped-down combat system, which you can just have it auto-battle for you. And also, I like that it has the sort of you can see. It's not like random encounters. You can see the enemies. And then you can get the initiative. You can take the first shot by actually meleeing them before you're in battle mode. And it will show you the steps you've taken in the dungeon so that you can retrace your steps just from this feature. I like that. Yeah, even though this game takes a ton of your time, I feel like it sort of respects-- It's like manual. --fart gas. You know, that's my fart gas. Yeah, that's right. It only shows where I've been, so that's OK. I remember that. But the game sort of respects your time in terms of the systems and the menus and everything, at least I found. I know that, obviously, it can be super wordy. And there are a lot of characters and a lot of place names and proper nouns and such. But maybe that could have been more concise. But I love that you can set the text to auto-advance, and it does at a pretty brisk pace, so you don't need to constantly be pressing a button. And then if you miss something, there's a text log. You can call up at any time, and you can just scroll up and see the dialogue that you may have zoned out during, which is-- A lot of quality of life stuff. Yeah. Which I guess-- It feels very polished in that regard. I thought so too. And 17 games in, maybe they should have it down by this point. But still, nonetheless, I appreciated that. It's like it's a huge time commitment, but it's all meat. It doesn't feel like filler, or at least it feels like they're trying to trim the boring part so you can get to the game. And then there's a lot of combat. And then there's the downtime. And then there's the overworld and the map where you can go on all sorts of side questing. And there is sort of like zero company a time component where you're coming back to the capital for certain events. And so you have to kind of time how much do I want to explore? I might miss this thing. But it's bottomless, basically. So if you want to just give yourself over to Fire Emblem, then you can't. But it's very well told and well scored and well presented. And I was sort of sucked into the premise and the setting and the characters and everything. Just very differentiated main characters. You can play at some are very chatty and some are very taciturn. And so I think there's a lot to like here. When will I have the time to return to this? I have no idea. But yeah, if you're mad and somehow you find more time than there are even I can find time for this one. Yes, even mad is stretched. Then that's an indication of how big this game is and how many other games are. But this season is insane. It's not enough. But if you only have a switch to or you're just a huge Fire Emblem person and that's your GTA, then you're-- going to be extremely satisfied, I think, with this game. So you're already 80 hours deep in that scenario. So, yeah, for me, my rant, I may have brought this up before the one thing that I always do dip into the menu and adjust the sliders with is the camera sensitivity. I do not understand how people play with the default camera rotation, because I always just slow. It's so slow. It's like, even if you're not used to mouse and keyboard or something, when you play with Fire Emblem, I'm singling this game out, but it applies to almost every game I play. But especially to this one, it's like molasses, you know, it's not a frame rate issue. It's just the camera rotates around you so slowly that if you want to just walk around and look at the world, it just, it feels like it's, it's really labored, I crank that thing up to max sensitivity. And yeah, I know it wasn't quite enough for me. Every time I do that, I feel like, wow, do I just have incredible coordination? Am I do I have amazing reflexes? Am I Spider-Man or something? Or are all of you just playing in slow motion all the time? How do, how do people live like this with the default camera? It's like, do you experience this? Is this just me? Well, let me just speak to Fire Emblem. There is, I don't know if the sensitivity, it's certainly not on the high side for the camera rotation. But I will also say that the only time I've really noticed the frame rate in this game is when I'm rotating the camera. So I think that that when there are some frame drops in this game, it is when you're rotating that camera. And I think that that is adding to the feel of it, perhaps being, you know, slow to you in addition to it actually being slow. So it's like doubly a problem. Yeah. That could be. Yeah. This is not running as a game. This is not locked at 60 frames per second in this game. Yeah. No, but, but usually it's pretty deliberate and it's turned based and you won't notice that much. So yeah, maybe, maybe they dialed that down so that you wouldn't notice the frame rate stuff. But then I noticed that it's taking an eternity for me to just turn my perspective around. So I don't know. I always have to jack that up immediately. And, and I don't know why or if I'm missing something or if I'm just, we'll have a doctor exam in your thumb. Yeah. I don't know what's happening. I need to slow down. Everyone else needs to speed up something needs to happen here. But at least I can always adjust that. And it's not as if I'm an inverted camera guy. I mean, I'm not a monster. It's just a person in an insensitive world. And I feel right. Yeah. We're just beaten down bad this world. It's true. Yeah. Anyway, I feel bad that we're giving short trip to fortunes. We've because this is the longest and deepest game that we discussed today. But yeah, there's just only so much time. I'm sorry, people. But what we've played, I think we can, we can join the chorus and give it a strong recommendation. And I have every intention of finishing this game. I also have a re-intention, but I'm less likely to follow through on that intention than you are. I've got great intentions. But do I have the time? 80 hours of that camera. Oh, my goodness. Yeah. Another thing, you can actually change a setting in the game to just speed up the game. Not the camera, but like the the game actions. It's almost like, you know, when you play a remake of some old game and you're just like speeding through dungeons and stuff, you can do that here too, just to speed up all the animations text and Pokemon roms. Yeah. So then the game will be only 95 hours instead of 100. But again, I appreciate every every sliver saved because we need it this summer and fall. All right. Well, thank you for spending some of your time, at least with us. Maybe you were multitasking and playing games while you were listening to us talk about them. But always a pleasure, Steve and Matt. Thanks so much. Thank you. And thanks as always to Devon Ruhlmado for producing this podcast and to our Juno Rangopal for green lighting it. You can contact us as always at ring of verse gaming at gmail.com. We are always happy to hear from you. And you will be hearing from us again soon, because we'll be back next week with more big games. What a shocker. We will have Star Wars galactic racer to talk about. We will have Gears of War e-day to talk about. And who knows what else tune in to find out what we discuss next time when we're back on Buttonesh.