(upbeat music) - What's up everybody? Welcome to Ishing Game Scoop. I'm your host, Damon Hadfield, and Joining me this week here in Studio, it's Pear Schneider. I'm your friend, Pear Schneider. We are also joined by Sam Claiborne. - I just want to point out this intro is completely unprompted. - It is. - Unprompted. - No, I'm prompted. - And Justin Davis. - Scoop. - And we got a great show for this week. You've got unfortunate news that a couple of big games recently have underperformed, leaving their future up in the air. - You know that's not true, actually, we know the future of one of them, and there's not much happening with that one. - We've also got this-- - A couple of them are both Metroid brats or Metroid 4, 'cause it came up for Switch 1. - It's not true. - Yeah, it's technically a couple of games. - I got a belief. - We also had this Nintendo Direct today, which is one of those that could have been an email, but there's still a couple of interesting things that we'll talk about. And also, I don't know if you guys heard but PlayStation is coming for our jobs. So we'll see, we'll see about that. - I don't stand a chance. (laughs) - But first, Obsidian's The Out of Worlds 2 underperformed and there won't be a third. Which, first of all, if you remember, Obsidian, or Out of Worlds 2 won a Damie last year. It was one of the top five Damie games of the year. - Okay. - So it didn't get the Damie bump. Does the Damie bump not mean anything? - It might cause the opposite. - I don't think so. (laughs) - Sort of bammacles. - It's possible that this was a financial decision that was made before The Damies, and we always advise people not to do that. You can shift your fiscal year to actually be any quarter you want. - That's true. - You might as well just do it at the end of quarter one. - Yes. - Wait for the Damies. - Safely accommodate the Damies, right? - I guess with, I never understand why the team, if they're making games that are like Bethesda games, why don't they just make a Bethesda game? The ones that people buy because of their names. - Like a good question. - Like a new Vegas follow-up. - Like a, yeah. - Like a little fallout side story, a little elder scrolls or something like that. - Yeah, I mean, if that's what it takes. - Yeah. If Microsoft owns a city and if Microsoft owns fallout, there is nothing stopping them from making fallout in Vegas too. - Yeah, and well, nothing stopping them and also nothing stopping Xbox, so I'm just telling them to do it, right? - Yeah. - Return to Vegas. - Or you guys are on fire. - I have no idea. Just slap the name on it. You already developed a Skyrim this year and a, you know, a Fallout or Starfield type game, right? Did I vowed in this? You have two games that you could just have retrofitted to be franchises and sold a billions of copies. That said, I respect that they have their own artistic vision and these games are both really, really love it. - That's a tough part. - That's a tough part though, right? - It's a really good game. I love this game. - But like that's the world today is that, you know, people love franchises and it's hard for, it's hard to get people to try new things and name recognition counts for something. Now granted, this is the second game in the series already. - Yeah. - So there is some name recognition, but like, the reality is some of our favorite games of all time and not the best selling games of all time and so. - Sure. - What do you do while you put Mario in it, right? - Well, so this is, as part of a Bloomberg interview, Obscini revealed that last year's Out of Worlds 2 had under-performed SQL is not in development, which I think is a little bit strange to come out just for four months after it was released and confirm you're not making a SQL. Why not just leave that up in the air? 'Cause the SQL would be years and years down the road anyway. - Yeah. - Yeah. - Maybe they're trying to get, I guess it's for investors, right? Or, I don't know. - I guess so. It's like you're taking your toys and going home a little bit. - For users, it might be, well, you better go back and play it now and show us. - Yeah, yeah. - But it's the opposite. It's like, now maybe if it was backlogged, people'd be like, I won't bother. - It feels like when you hear a TV show it isn't getting a second season, you're like, well, I'm not gonna watch the first one, you know? - 100%. - Yeah, it's like that. Although, if you think about Obsidian, they've now worked on this series for 10 years now and neither game has been a huge hit. There doesn't seem to be a lot of enthusiasm for this franchise. So maybe they're just like, okay, whatever. That's enough on to the next thing. - Yeah. - That's funny. - Yeah. - It is a absolute miracle that they put this and a vowed out in the same year. - How? - And grounded too. Grounded to. - Grounded to. - Yeah. - I didn't know. And maybe this is public knowledge, but I didn't know until the Bloomberg reporting that a vowed started life as a destiny like, you know, a multiplayer sort of, you know. - We did it. - We tested it like, we took one destiny like back. - For the single players. - And then it was stuck in development hell for years and years and got rebooted with a new director. And then, you know, so it's like, it came out and was like, okay, it's this reasonably scoped, you know, single player action RPG. And not every game needs to be a million billion hours. And it's like, I didn't know that that game took like, eight years to make. And it's a miracle that came out at all. So that makes it even kind of all the more impressive. - Sam, what's the opposite of a miracle? - No, shit show. - Okay, 'cause I think that's more what last year was for Obsidian. I don't think they wanted to put three games out in one year. In fact, Brandon Adler, who served as director in the outer world, too, says, oh, I'm sorry, it's some Josh Shoeyer, the studio design director said, it's not good to release three games in the same year. It's the result of things going wrong. - Oh, yeah. - Yeah. - Okay. - And then it was brand. - Three marketing cycles for three different, very, like, you know, huge games. - And two kind of similar issues. - Similar, that's the issue, too, right? - True, true, yeah. - I also liked the band. - And then Brandon Adler, director on outer world, too, said, I don't think anybody really likes five, six, seven-year dev cycles. Nope, nope, we don't like those. - Well, especially you think, I mean, we don't like it, right? 'Cause you have to wait a long time for a game, but like, it does. It must be really tough to work on a single project for that long. - That's a great idea. - Yeah, well, it's just horrible, you know? It's like movies, you get to make one movie a year, basically, if you're involved, and if you're an actor, you can make a couple. But, you know, directors, they can cook out one a year. - Well, and the damage is exponentially higher when a game takes that long to develop, right? And then, you're not gonna get another one. - You start making a game today. Five years seems to be kind of the minimum for a AAA game. So like, you're like, okay, well, I hope this franchise or this genre is popular in five years. Yeah, I hope in five years time, people have an appetite for what I'm starting to work on right now, you know? - That's what we were just talking about for Star Wars Outlaws, right? It's like, you take this bet on like, hey, Baby Otis, pretty popular. Star Wars has another trilogy, you know, in the middle of it, right now, maybe that'll end good. And it's like, nope, nobody likes Star Wars anymore. All your money's gone. - I know, and you're making it for PlayStation 5, and there's not gonna be a PlayStation 5 when it comes out. You'll be on PS6, and yeah. - It's, it's almost happened to GTA. - And of course, also, my Xbox originally announced an $80 price tag for that award too. Now, they visually walked that back, but you think it's a case where it did, or it's soured people on the game already. - I don't know. - The damage of the game. - No. - It was also in Game Pass, right? And like, yeah, I don't know. I think when they openly say it's a failure, that means people on Game Pass didn't play it either, right? I mean, there was this big subscriber audience there. It just didn't, like, people just, maybe there was too much competition out there, too many similar games, and people just didn't have the time to play it as well. - I can't say this enough too. Like, they got pretty lucky that there wasn't GTA out at the time and everything. And there was a kind of a quiet fall, so it should have had a good chance as, man, this would have made a great game to play in June, you know? Just like everybody's home from school, got to play a single player, big open game. - Well, they can just, all the fall release windows is not helping games. - They can hire some external company imported to switch to now. - I'm surprised we didn't hear about it today. - Yeah. - Yeah. - I wonder if also, is there anything to the fact that, so what our world's one was 2019? Our world's two is 225, and right in the middle was Baldur's Gate 3. Does that sort of like raise the bar for what people expect for an open world? RPG, where you have companions? - Yeah. - Maybe. - Yeah. - Yeah, yeah. - But look, we got Oblivion remastered and other things. - Yes, there were a lot of things to play if you actually look back at last year, right? Yeah. Speaking of Baldur's Gate 3, Sam, do you have any updates? - Yeah, I started playing Cairn. - Okay, we'll got it. My update is that I played a little bit more Baldur's Gate. I can continue to play it. I have no problems with it. In fact, I like it a lot, but I did start playing Cairn. Do you want me to talk about that? - Well, first I want to share that I'm afraid my adventures in Baldur's Gate do, might have come to a premature end, 'cause I seem to have-- - Oh, no. - I think I'm soft-locked in camp. I went to long-rest, and I saw I'm in camp, and to end the day, and heal you, you have to use your sleeping bag, but when I try to use the sleeping bag, it says, "You can't fast travel right now." - Uh-oh. - And that's it? If I switch to another character, try to use the sleeping bag. No, you can't fast travel right now. So I don't know. If any one in scoop nation has any tips, I'm not sure I can get out of my camp. - Yeah, I mean, you can just blow on-- - Humber. - I'll just blow on the data that's on my PS5 horror drive. - I don't fix it. - Yeah, I don't fix it. - Aren't you sure I'm putting it in the refrigerator? - Yeah. - Put a wrap a towel around it. - It sucks when they're these sort of, these bugs that only you encounter in a video game, and then there's no apparent solution. I still cannot 100% Indiana Jones, 'cause there's that stupid bug with a wheel. - It's gonna be out on Switch before you can be in an Xbox. - Every time there's a patch, I'm like, nope, not a big, I just, I cannot want to represent it. - But they acknowledge the bug that you had. - Well, yeah, you could play it again. - It's not a wiki, we describe how it happens. - Maybe you could play it again on Switch 2 and finish it there. - It's such a story-driven game. I don't feel like we're playing it. - Is that across safe? Just pick it up, maybe. - Oh, okay. - All right, so just pay for it again, is what you're saying. That'll fix it. - What and how is Karen? - Okay, so Karen is a, - Is that everything? - And to be clear, we're not saying Karen, right? - No. - Karen, yes, but yes. It's C-A-I-R-N.
means a pile of stones. It's a, so it's a climb everything. Really difficult, open-world game about rocks. Did I sell anybody? I got everybody there. You got it so excited with the rocks. You got a 9 out of 10 on IGN, and you know, other critics like it too. You know, your climbing mountains, that's what it's about. It looks really fast. So, well, you know, it has this kind of, you know, dark souls combat level of like movement, where it's like, it's like, you have to like find the seams and get the right stuff and everything. I actually turned on a little assist that tells you where your perfect hand grips are, because once the game gets to a certain point and you want to do a bunch of extra stuff, that's been helpful. It's not like, there's other options, and again, the game is very hard. So, there's other options in there that let you like have more places, ways to save and stuff like that, but I didn't turn those on. Because they they warn you in the game. This game is meant to be hard if you turn these on and kind of ruins it. So, I didn't do that, but I turned up. Anyway, so what you do in this game is you're exploring this cliff face and this mountain and cave system. It's really bad going to happen. It's jittery or because it's like muscles are exhausted. It's cramping. And so you can like press a button to like shake out one arm and breathe for a second and try again, but you have to be in a really good position to do that. Otherwise, you got to use these anchor points, which you only have like a couple of. So, if you run out of those cliff face, you're just never getting up there. When you die in this game, you lose 15, 20 minutes. It's like it's like dark souls in that. Like, you lose a long time. It gets really stressful when you're in your climbing. But what's cool is that the mountain's full of cool stuff. There's a backstory about like a troglodite race that has like tombs and like, you know, like war. It's like, you know, like some, you know, fake British short. Sorry, European country. I know Switzerland or France or something like that. You know, it's supposed to be like a fake country thing. I know. So then they have all that. And then there's like secrets. And then there's of course what happens in Everest, like people die and they leave bodies everywhere. So you find these like ghoulish scenes and then you like have to like loop them and like find cool stuff to like use from like a skeleton. It's it's fantastic. I love every minute of it. I've been helping make some guide pages for it because I found stuff so hard in it. But like, I don't know. Everybody on this show would love this game. Like it feels like the parts of Zelda that are like, I'm just gonna get up this damn thing, you know, and you just like commit to it. And that's what the game is with a lot of walking and running around segments that are not like that because you're exploring. But there's a great inventory management system. It's actually really good. Whatever you can cram into your bag and you can actually like tamp it down by shaking your bag and cram more stuff into it like organically. Like it's like, if you feel like you can't get any more, it's not because there's like not a cube left. So you can squish stuff in there. It's so fun. Is what platform carry and cook? Is that everything? What can I play this on? It's on PS5 and PC. Can you wear a hat in this? Yeah, you're wearing a hat the whole time. It's like a knit hat. But this, you know, Damon's gonna cut this segment because as we all know, I don't like any games. And so whenever I talk about a game I like on this, like Metroid Prime 4 or something like, we don't actually, we cut it from the episode. But for this one, I thought you guys might be interested. I'm actually gonna play it. It's so good. I have it downloaded. I'm looking forward to starting. And I do, I really do recommend turning on just this one thing. All it does is right right now, like what you're looking for is corners and seams. And that's fine. But the game isn't perfect at that because if it's overhanging you a little bit, you can't really, unless you really spend a long time with each hand grip, then it's a little bit more annoying. They're just turning on this box. It says like, you got it. You got it. You need that. Also, rain, it sucks. So bad that first time that happened. I was like, because I have breathed the wild on my mind. I don't like everything's ruined. It's not so bad. Don't worry about it. You shouldn't climb like this, but it's funny if you do it. I was, I was updating the IGM playlist homepage and I'm like, oh, why is everybody playing this game? It was right at the top. So must be, must be popular. Are you playing on Steam? Yeah. No, I'm playing on PS5 and it's, I would recommend playing on a controller because like my hands are like sweaty and like cramping from, you know, how much I'm like focusing on this game and like, I wouldn't want to do that on Steam back. This is certainly cool. That was not on my radar, but it looks good. Yep. I love it. I've also returned to tear down. Anyone remember this one from a major? Yes. Cool. This is the like, smash everything, heist, Minecraft Graphics scan. That was, I guess I played it a couple years ago with Kingo because it was on PlayStation Plus. Then they removed it, which is super lame PlayStation. And Kingo was super bummed. So I've been waiting for a sale. And last week, the, the base game is $30. But last week, the, special edition, whatever it's called was 20. I was like, that doesn't make sense, but whatever. I'm sorry. I got the, I got the special edition, we've been playing that. It's like a perfect sandbox for kids because he doesn't even care about stealing the stuff. He just wants to smash all the buildings. He'll get in a van, drive through a building and just laugh hysterically. It's great. Oh, that's great. I'll let him play for a few minutes before bed. And then after I put it in bed, I come back and play a couple of missions because it's a really, really fun clever game. It's got a really satisfying gameplay loop because you, you arrive on the scene and there's no time limit to start. So you can just sort of, you, you find what it is, you have to steal or destroy. And then you have to work backwards to figure out how you're going to get to your, get away car. Because you only have one minute once you pick up the item that you're supposed to steal. But it's really fun. You might have to like, you might have to stand there and plan your route. Yes. You have to think and run. You plan your route. You may have to destroy holes through walls to make you, you know, you can run as fast as possible. You can path it out. Yes. That's, that's what you're, that's the whole game. And you have a can of spray paint that you can use to spray your path. So you can just follow the path that you made. It's really, really fun and clever. Sometimes the thing you have to steal might be movable. If it's in the bed of a truck or on a boat and you can drive it closer to your get away car. It's a, it's a very, very clever game. That's awesome. Yeah. That's tear down. Perry, you've been playing Fire Emblem on the GameCube version on Nintendo Switch. That's right. Path of Radiance, you know, notably one of the two-parter games in the Fire Emblem series. Radiant Dawn, for the Wii, we follows up on it. There was actually connective tissue. You could transfer items from the GameCube game to the Wii game, which probably means that they wanted it to come out on GameCube. Yeah. With your, your saves, you collect these coins that can be used to forge stuff. No, I've, I went through it already. I finished it, like spend like 45 hours or something. I fixed up, fixed up our guide a little bit. It's so freaking good, man. I love this game. It's an SRPG, which stands for Shove RPG, because the game introduces the Shove and the Smite moves, where when, when a character is just out of reach of an opponent, you can like, another character can shove them forward, as long as they lighter. And so you can get extra movement range. It makes it really strategic. It's really fun. It's great. And then it doesn't have, I feel like I love Fire Emblem. I've played every, every game, ever in the series except for the mobile one. And I always feel like the later ones sometimes get a little bloated with the things that you do in between the strategy missions. This one has like the right amount of building support, recruitment and sort of conversational stuff. It's really good. The only downside is, and by the way, it runs at 60, it's upraised, the only downside, it's 4x3, and it's still Nintendo to this date insists on having the hideous sidebar graphics that you can turn off, even though modern displays, you actually get more burn in with these patterns than not having them, right? It's just like a subtle kind of gray skill. Yeah, yeah, but it's still white on an old edge. You don't, why, why light? Yeah. You know, what, why turn on the lights if you don't have to, like that, that they should be able to choose flying toasters or rat maize or something like that for it. Yeah, exactly. Just don't need anything on modern screens. Did you, can you shove people off cliffs and stuff like enemies? No, no, it's not, it's not like that. Is there any verticality to it? Is there any verticality to the levels? Yeah, yeah, there's sometimes you go up a mountain pass and so the horses can't go as, as fast as somebody on foot or the flyers, so to my favorite. Pegasus, Wyverns, Falcons. Yeah, yeah. And it's like making strong ones. And then most notably, one of the coolest things about this game is there is in the last three missions, I think second to last mission, there is the black knight. And like the game wants you to not be able to beat him. And you can. Like, you have to really plan how you spec out like the main character, how you, what, what skill you give him in order to even have a chance at beating the black knight. Most people go through the game, never beat the black knight. It's okay. You can run away. If you fight him and lose your debt, you have to redo like an hour of the last mission. It's really brutal. But yeah, most people just run away. Don't fight him. And then they get a character recruit that's not as good as the one you would get if you beat him. Anyway, it's a fantastic game. It feels really, really modern in every way, except for voice acting. It's cheesy, of course. You can just put on the black knight pinball soundtrack. Well, there you go. Beat the black knight. Yeah, isn't this game, isn't this game like 80 hours long? Isn't it crazy? It's about 50. It's about 50 realistically. I mean, you know, I haven't played it since it was new. And I just remember it just going on and on and on and on. You know what? Now, because you have safe states on GameCube on on on Switch 2, it actually, you can probably do it in like 30 and, you know, I paused a lot to write down stuff and improve our guides. So,
It probably isn't for such a huge burn. I mean, it's permadeath in this game too. It is permadeath and like you can cheat now with safe states, you know, the stats upgrades and the main mode are randomized. And so if you don't get your speed boost on Ike when you wanted it, you can just put a safe state before you level up and then go back and try it again. So what year did this come out? 2001? No, no, no. 2004. Okay, maybe. Yeah. So definitely two towers was up by now and they should have called shove toss. Toss me. Toss me. You're going to have to toss me. Yeah, look at it. Look, it's, it's, it's just great. I mean, it's like, it's, it's polygonal. It still looks nice on today's screens. It's, it's fairly fast too. You can turn off combat animations and just do it in the field like here. So it's great. I will have to revisit this one and Justin has been playing Watch the Bear, right? I, I, I did finish watching the bear. I'm in between video games right now. So I did start back up load of the rings online. Um, so boy, like we'll see if it sticks. We've lost them. Yeah, that's exactly like I know it's like I have this reputation as a big low-tro booster and superfan and I've talked about it often on over the show for the last decade. But I don't really like what happens is I go back to that game then because it's an MMO. I don't remember where I am or what any of my abilities are. Anything that's in my inventory and I have no idea what's going on. And so what I actually do is I start load of the rings over and I do the shire and breathe in the loan lands. And maybe if I'm, you know, really stick with it, I'll make it to Rivendell. And so I play, I've played like the first 40 or 50 hours of that game probably five times in my life. I've almost, I've almost never made it farther than that. Which in MMO terms, like I barely made it out of like the early game, you know, and then I bounce off it and go do something else. But in non-MMO terms, it's like, well, you know, like 50 hours, that's like a whole video game's worth of game. But it's great. I'm playing a, I'm playing a Hobbit Guardian. I also have, I also have a Hobbit Merglor is another fun class to play. Bargalar. And the shire is so good. I mean, it's so, you know, it's early game in MMO stuff. So it's all the garbage that you normally hate in a, in a massively multiplayer game, where it's like, ah, you know, go deliver, you know, these flowers and go like I'm, I literally spent like all morning just delivering pies to people. And that was it. And like in other games, you would hate that. But in this game, it just feels very peaceful and homey and it's very hobby and they're all really cute. And so it's a lot of, I really like running around the shire in that game. Thanks. Data privacy is more important than ever in our online lives. And that's why we at GameScoop recommend Surfshark. 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Head to surfshark.com/gamescoop or use code GameScoop at checkout to get four extra months of Surfshark VPN. Stream your favorite shows and stay connected wherever you are with Surfshark. That's surfshark.com/gamescoop and don't forget to use promo code GameScoop for four extra months of VPN goodness. Okay, Nintendo's silent on Metroid Prime 4 beyond sales, prompting fan concern over the series future. Nintendo's latest financial results are notably silent on the sales performance of Metroid Prime 4, which is not appeared on the company's list of million copy-selling games for either Switch 1 or Switch 2. Although, have you seen that Nintendo has since clarified that combined sales have exceeded a million? Yeah, which is. But even so, I mean, we've been talking about Nintendo financials on this show. They reveal them once a quarter and we just marvel at like 80 million copies of this and four million copies of that. And the part that always drove that really hammered home to me how insane Nintendo's successful run is not necessarily the 50 million sellers and the 80 million sellers, but that every single random Nintendo game are three million of this and four million of that. It'd be a mega hit for any other company. And so for Metroid to, you know, barely eat out a combined million in sales between the Switch and Switch 2 version is. It's kind of a catastrophe. It's a bummer, but guys, it missed the big holiday shopping season. It was a December release, right? Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, that's a choice. It means that we got less than a month of sales in there. I hope it picks up. And there was just a lot of negativity around the launch, too. Like, I thoroughly talked about this. Sam and I both really liked this game. We enjoyed it. Yeah, it has issues, but to constantly always lead with the issues when there's so much good stuff in this game, feels like underselling all the. Just the cool moments you have in this game. It's just the atmosphere is fantastic. Look at it. It's such a tech demo to really show us the Switch 2. So hopefully people will pick it up. Maybe it'll go down and price some day and entice us some people. Maybe Switch 2 owners are stingy. I don't know. Yeah. So I didn't play it. What? I didn't play it. You should play it. Well, maybe, except here's the reason why is that Metroid Prime 1 is a 10 out of 10 game. Yeah. So an 8 out of 10 Metroid Prime is kind of like, "Oh, well, maybe." It's an 8 out of 10 because it has like a annoying fetch quest thing. Yeah. But Wind Waker had that, too. And if you think about. Wind Waker's 10 out 10. But Wind Waker's 10 out 10. Yeah, but if you go back to Wind Waker now, the original, not the HD version, you would be annoyed at the Tri-Full Shards quest. I think Wind Waker is more annoying than this. Yeah. And then same with stuff like Skyward Sword and games like that. I feel like this is so funny because the things that are the worst in this game are the things that are the most Zelda. It's the horse riding around the overworld in Twilight Princess, you know, like that sort of stuff. Yeah. You don't have to do that stuff, either. Well, 100% of this game. The crystals you have to. Yeah, but that takes a long time and I did it. No, I know, but that's not fun. The crystal collection is smashing into crystals is fun, but after doing it five minutes, you're like, I'm saying that just going. You barely. You don't do a lot of like backtracking travel through the desert. You're like, "Oh, those sucks. I'll do the radio." That's all nonsense. Damon, I think you'll play. Not how this game works. I think you'll play it. And like for the first half of the game, you're like, "What the hell are people talking about?" It's honestly like the. Some of this stuff is just amazing. It's just. I would argue that the back half then picks up, like there's maybe a middle, but like, you know, the ice part is amazing. The fire parts are amazing. Those are all the, you know, blade later games. It's kind of dumbass ending. So like, it's like the story is not. It does have a dumb ass ending. But if you, if you also, if you're like collecting like everything and stuff, like going back for like a missile tank or something like is generally fun in this game. Like, they built these really cool puzzles around some of the extra stuff you don't have to get. But there's definitely, I mean, you know, we've been talking forever for years on this show about how video game review scores are more than just math. That's not like a game is 10 out of 10 that loops. Now it's an 8 out of 10 because it has this fetch quest. And so that's part of that's part of I think in Metroid Prime Force case that works to its detriment of like, you know, it's not just like, "Oh, let's make a list of like, I don't like these four things about it." But it just feels kind of old school. Like it feels like a game that could have been released on the GameCube. Like, you know, that's just from a game design sense. And like, that can be a pro for some people. Like, you know, that there's a comfort in that and they're ready to go back to that kind of like style of, of, you know, game design. But I think for general audiences, it's like, tastes just feel like they've kind of moved on a little bit. Like, Zelda evolved with the Times and Mario evolved with the Times. Metroid kind of hasn't. And, and I think some like, if we got Half-Life 3 and it was so much like Half-Life 2 and it was all gravity gun puzzles and really good story. Like, who cares? Like, that's a retro game now basically. But it would be really cool. And that's how I look at it. I mean, every time there's a 3D platformer that like really works like Astrobot and I'm like, you know, like it, there's points of innovation that game. But like, it's also pretty old school. Yeah. I look, I want to believe that people will give this game a chance and go, go back and play it. It's, I was generally sad when it was over and I think that to me is always a sign that ultimately for all the criticisms I have, I could talk for now and I actually did Logan and I did a spoiler cast. We, we talked more about the things that annoyed us and then we kept stopping ourselves going like, but I really liked it. And I think when the game is over, I go like, I kind of want to play it again. And I think that that is a sign that it was a good experience. And it's freaking gorgeous. It is good. Every time I see it, I just can't believe this is an Internet of Swiss. Yeah. And like, you can't show what you're actually seeing in this game. Like, when you're playing at, and you're in these like ice caves and like everything is like covered in frost and and damage is looking really good on it. Like it looks awesome. It looks so good. It's like doom or something. And you can have these visuals at 120 frames per second on Switch too. Yeah. Yeah, I really do. I can't recommend it more. I think it's a total Damien game and I think you
You should play it despite the score. You know what we can do? We can go in the archives and lower all the other scores. - Yeah, I'll do that after this show. I'll just-- - Yeah, that's a good score. - Here's what we do. Let's do, let's do, is it still fun today episode on it? - Okay. - That's great. (laughing) - No, please, just a review. - Please, please, played. It's not, honestly, it is a game in the vein of Windwaker. And so if you like Windwaker and Skyward Sword has annoyed me in some parts, it's like if you enjoyed that, this game is good to play. (upbeat music) - Sticking with Nintendo, parallel to where we're talking about Dispatch, it came to Switch 2. - Yep. - Have you played Dispatch yet? - No, no, it's censored. - Well, not on other platforms. - I was actually gonna play it and then all the negative chatter, I'm like, I'm gonna wait and see what happens. - It's a fantastic game. - But I really love the game I played it on. I'll play it on one of the other platforms. - Yeah, but it's unfortunately censored on Switch 2, which is really weird because there's other games that have nudity and-- - And they ain't talking about it. (laughing) - But Sam, you said it's actually funnier when there's like a big black bar dangling in sort of a thing. - Well, you know what's great about the black bars? I don't think it's a traction, the game too much. But we keep using this image on IGN of like a black bar, but it's like kind of by like, her collar bar. Yeah, that, but like, that's real. That's actually a censored moment. - Yeah, that's how they do it. - It looks like we're trolling people. - I mean, you probably wouldn't even notice. There was nudity if that black box wasn't there. But now you know. - That's the point of the game too. - That's actually a funny moment. - That's a funny-- - Yeah, yeah. So yeah, that's really weird. - It seemed initially that Nintendo had forced the censorship, but then there was a theory that it was the Japanese ratings board zero that just doesn't allow that stuff. And games like Cyberpunk 2, CD Projekt created a separate version for Japan, like an edited version of the game. And then they sold a different version elsewhere. And so the theory was that ad hoc that developer here wouldn't or couldn't make a new version for Japan. So they just made one censored version for the world. However, that's not confirmed. That's just a theory. Neither Nintendo or ad hoc has confirmed that. In fact, this week, ad hoc says it is legally unable to explain why it couldn't release a separate uncut version. What? It's legally unable to explain. But no, it's not. But this could be the thing is like the Witcher 3 exists on Switch. - Exactly. - And like there's nudity in it. And so I'm not sure what happened. Like somebody just, just call each other. Just somebody calls someone. - Yeah. - What, if they, what law would be broken if they explained why or who would sue them? Would Nintendo sue them? That would look really bad for Nintendo? - Yeah, they're like signed an NDA in censoring their game for Nintendo standards. And then in that NDA it said you can't talk about what you censored or why or what our rules are. I don't know. - Oh, it's probably honestly. - I'm legally not allowed to explain legal things. - And Nintendo probably doesn't want a list of the things that have to be censored in a game out there. 'Cause like, you know, Nipple is obvious. But there's probably shit that they want censored. That's not obvious. That like is a little bit controversial. - There's Nipple and Mario Odyssey. That's true. - Male Nipple. - Yeah, so they censored a middle finger. Like there's a sex scene. They censored some noises. - Oh, there it is. - Yeah, there's a lot of Nipple and Mario Kart. That's the cow. - Oh, the cow. - Teets. - Sam, those are called teets. Okay, Joebert, let's get this ready. Server and I have something to share with the class. So I just want to point out the complete insanity that a fantastic game, like Dispatch, that has a boob and a middle finger and a hanging dong that's in shadow. That had to be censored. While at the same time, this is allowed on the shop, no problemo, call of beauty. (laughing) This is fine. This is fine. Call of Beauty, it's a, for our listeners, this is a new game on the eShop available right now. Call of Beauty, it's a jigsaw puzzle game where you make jigsaw puzzles of AI Slop women wearing scantily-clad military outfits. - Well, at least, look, I appreciate that they went for a wholly original idea. (laughing) - And yes, call of beauty is the exact call of duty font. The old school call of duty font. - Yes, amazing. - Can I play this on my bar top monitor in 1992? - How does this stuff get through? - It's because there's an Nintendo seal of quantum. - Yes, I know, I am familiar with the seal of quantum. - There's a, there's nobody thing, well apparently someone is paying attention because this badge couldn't get through. - Yeah, but this company can't legally say why they're allowed to put this in store. - Yeah. Well, I was curious. So this is made by a company. It's not made by any person. - It is. - It is. - I am company. - It's made by a developer called, where is it? 17th studio, and they have a website, and I went to check a website, and all of their images didn't load, but they do have a slogan. So 17th studio, the developer of Call of Beauty slogan is, we don't make games. We make only good games. - Oh, good. (laughing) - I like the, I like the thing. - We make only good quantity. - There's a, there's a related feature that's been developing over time where the Nintendo seal of quantum is also becoming Daemon goes down the rabbit hole. - Yeah. - And we just see like, you know, look. - It turns out. - They're just digging up. - Some of the Wii Aids, did you go to Best Buy and stop at the cash register and look at the giant bucket of Wii games? It was amazing. - I love it. - I don't think there's a complete catalog of all that stuff. - Yeah. - The Game Boy Advance version of that, there was just like a tumble of dented cardboard boxes and a big bin at Costco. And like half of them were episodes of like, you know, Cartoon Network shows. - Yes. - GBA video. - GBA video. - Please. - I'm just going to talk about a little discovering new Wii games to this day. - Thank you to Superfighting Robot on Twitter for pointing out Call of Beauty to me. That was quite a fun. - How partial do you think the nudity is? - In Call of Beauty. - Yeah, it's just partial nudity and sexual themes. - Only one way to find out. So speaking of Twitter, this whole thing with this batch and the developer, Ad hoc, like it could have been, the part that's really crappy is that they didn't tell people ahead of time. Like, Ad hoc has a social following. 140,000 Twitter followers. So I will look back to their feed. They were promoting the Switch 2 launch of dispatch saying, "Prioter now." At no point did they say, "Hey, heads up of it, anyone?" Everyone, we just want to let you know that due to circumstances beyond our control, we had to censor dispatch on Switch 2. We're sorry if you're disappointed. We just wanted to let you know. Before you preorder, it will be a censored version. They never did that. And that's the crappy part. They took people's money without telling me it was going to be censored. Well, I still maintain that it's funnier with the black box. Oh, it was you who said that. I'm not arguing against it. But the people who bought the game should make that choice. Sure, agree. And they should have the choice to turn it on or off. Yeah, exactly. OK, there was an internal partner direct today. My biggest question coming out of it is, Pear, are you getting the Leon amiibo? Yeah, and Claire. Have you seen my new display in my office? I saw people building it for you. I've seen people in the building. I had seen some small shells put in that just where they were not for amiibo. Yeah, we're going bankrupt because Pear got new shells. No, no, I just had a couple of new shells because I couldn't fit all that amiibo anymore. Yeah, I will get those. Yeah, yeah. OK, it's stupid. Now, this thing is getting away from Nintendo a little bit. We're making bigger characters. I don't like that stuff. But there's still, I mean, many of them are still really nicely made. Yeah. Except for Leon. Does he look burpy? I don't really see that. Which is super dirty. Does not look great. But they are actually-- It's like a kid took a magnifying glass to him in the sun. Yeah, so it's melting. But for a while, if you remember amiibo, I don't want to talk too much about it. Many people are switching off and leaving already and buying Call of Beauty. But in the very beginning, they were sort of locked in to do the smash brothers poses. And then they had to come up with ways to actually make them stand up. That's how you got like peace stand link and all of that with a yellow stream coming out of his legs. And like, here they can do any pose they want. And like, this is a pose they chose for Leon. And I'm like, come on. Leon looks so good in the game too. I don't know what they're doing. Should we have Leon doing something interesting? No, he should just be standing there. Stay with Claire. OK, got it. Do they do anything? Our article didn't save these amiibo do anything in game. It's all BS. Yeah, they unlock weapons, right? Or weapons skins. Yeah, it's the usual amiibo stuff, which by the way, Nintendo, and I love Nintendo, but they absolutely get a pass for like cool costumes and stuff. Or just locked behind these $30, $40 amiibo. At this point, make them half the price and take the tech out, right? Like, take the NFC stuff out. Because like in the beginning, remember, the concept was you swipe your amiibo and it can store data. And you bring it to your friend's house and you load your amiibo character or something. Like, that sort of stuff would be really fun. Like, you could use an amiibo to like instantly create a custom, like logging or whatever on your friends. Like, when you're playing Smash Bros. to load your name and all of that, right? Yeah. That there's actually a reason. Well, there was a good idea at one point. And then, yeah.
and then they just turned it a collectible. - But when Breath of the Wild came out, I would dream I switched into the office so I could use your amiibo to get, like, you know, meat and gold and arrows and tons, like actual useful stuff in the game. - Well, you get something useful in Metroid Prime 4, which people really, really liked. - What, the music? - Yes. - That was the biggest nontroversy of our generation. - It does not change at all. - I don't know about that, is it? - It doesn't change. - Although, it's just the biggest gaming nontroversies. - A good feature there. - That's a good feature. - But if you have one such nonsense, and like, you do need to listen to a podcast, as I keep mentioning while you play the, while you collect your green crystals, but Evan, the techno-bops doesn't help. - Listening to a podcast while you play is something that Sony has a solution for Sam, which we get to in just a moment. - Oh, God. - They're coming for us. - Did you like the Nintendo Direct? - It was, it's fine. It was, Logan on NBC was reading from my path of radiance. A review from like 200 years ago. And my final paragraph was all about how, it's great that there's a drought of Nintendo games because it makes Nintendo translate games to English that would have never seen the light of day. I mean, we got Fire Emblem because they weren't any other GameCube games coming out. Like, that started the sort of Western discovery, the GBA games and GameCube games of Fire Emblem, right? And this direct felt like that. It was like, here are all these Japanese games. Like, there's literally a visual novel game in here that I don't think would be an unofficial Nintendo Direct if they were, if there was a lot of Western support. And I mean, the console's getting real third party support, like not just kind of like lip service support, but that's a big actual video game. So it's like, that's a big deal and that's exciting to see isn't switched to. - I mean, the story goes that switch to deaf kids went out really late to some devs and especially smaller devs. And so there's this sort of, there's a little bit of a gap. And so if you watch this direct, like it is mostly, I wanna say sloppy seconds because they're good seconds, right? Like Valheim, they're like quality games coming to, Indiana Jones coming to the switch to now. So there's a lot of good stuff, but like, there were some really funny Japanese games that, there was one, I'm happy that we're getting them and that they can translate to English. - That's the game I was gonna talk about. So it's perfectly timed. We're like, I remember that moment where like live live was announced and then no one knew it was going on or cared except Pear and you were losing your mind. - Did you see that this game is like live live, that they should have? - Well, Elliot, you were talking about that too, but the moment in this direct, for me, that was that card game, Damon, it was cold-sept. - Yeah, cold-sept head-backed. - By the way, if you've never played it, that's what that card game was. It's absolutely a damey game where, you know, the elevator pitch is it's kind of like half monopoly where you're moving around a board game board and then you're taking over and like owning spaces on this board game. But then it's half like card-baddler where if you land on a board game square that someone else has like claimed and put a monster on, then you fight them with cards that you have in your own hand. And like I played it on the PS1 and it was absolutely enamored. And like sometimes I feel like I'm the only person on earth that like cares about and knows about this game franchise. And so they announced not one, but two cold-sept games today of like, you know, an updated re-release of the original was some quality of life features and then a brand new cold-sept as well. - Yeah. - So pumped. - There was a pair game in the direct but it was only in the Japanese direct and that was the Goemon collection. Konami finally woke up from its slumber since they released Goemon on the DS, that's the last game. And they're releasing a 13 game collection. So they got there, I think it was four super NES games. - Is it have that crazy Super Nintendo one in it with all the amazing like Mac stuff in it? - Yeah, yeah, Goemon 2, on the Super NES. Yeah, all four Super NES games. The NES games and the Game Boy games are in this collection. So anything in the 2D realm before it. - We call that Legend of the Mystical Ninja here. - Before Mystical Ninja 64 and all that, yeah. - I can reveal to you all now that I swapped out our 20 questions game last minute right before we recorded because it was going to be Legend of the Mystical Ninja. - Oh man, I had a lot of conversation about that with Pear this morning. I was like, it's too soon. Too soon, I have to switch it out. - Oh, that's so mean, the game's so good. - But I was waiting for an episode that Pear was on to do Mystical Ninja. - Ah, totally. - Now you can never do it, never. My coldest step story real quick is I played a coldest step game on 360. And Justin's right, and was like, this is so me, board game, card game. There's some sort of like getting characters to marry and then you play as like their lineage. But then I realized after a long time put into it, the game was total BS. Because I was like playing a level and my dice rolls weren't going the way I wanted to. So I was like, I'm gonna start over, I'm gonna start over. And I did that a couple times and then I was like, wait a minute, every time I restart over, the dice rolls are exactly the same. It's not random at all. - You kidding me. - So it was total BS, really? - The game, and I say this like, look, as I said, I might be one of the biggest coldest step fans in the United States, but that is 100% true. Like the game will host you. Like you'll have, if I land on any single square, I'm fine, accept this square. If I land on this square, I'm host in every single time. It'll like, it'll like the AI cheats like hell. And so hopefully that's something that can be addressed. - That's funny. - Did I never play this? - Real quick, I'm out. - It's a pair of things. - You're basically playing Fortune Street on Wii. - That's right. - Real quick. - Joe, but I'm at 1% on my IFB. - Are we good? - Yeah, we wrapped this up. - Okay. The other one. - We're done. - Damon. - Damon. - Damon, we got it. - The episode's over. - Okay, well, that's all the scoops we have for this week. The other one I wanted to call it is Adventures of Elliott, the Millennium Tales, which I guess was announced last summer, but I missed. And this is another 2D HD game from Square Enix, but this one is an action RPG. So what more secret of evermore? - Wow, a secret of mana, yeah. - Yes, secret of mana. - The good secret one. Then Final Fantasy. And this looks really cool. Like, I love this art style, this looks great. My one concern is that it seems super serious and melodramatic. And there's all this really, really dense lore building and weird names for everything. So that's my one. - You can try out a demo, you can play. - Yeah, the demo's out on Switch, yeah. - Yeah, I thought this was really exciting. I really love this approach to the art style because you can make very pretty games on hardware that is not super duper powerful. And like, they keep getting better and better at it. Maybe someday they'll make a chrono trigger like that and they'll be really nice. - Oh, they should. - But, it's trying, it's got seven times. - In keeping with Square Enix naming strategy, can it just come up with a cool name? Like, just once, Octopath Traveler, it's so bad. Like, live alive is mad, I love that game. But, just call this kid, call it like Dragon Lancer or something, and it'll sell like 10 times as many copies. - It's time, Dragon. - This is not like, if your name is Elliot, I don't mean to insult you, but like, you're not. - Elliot. - You're not Errathorn, or Erragorn. Like, you're, you know, like, pick a cool name. - Yeah, and it's the mark on that one. - Out of the legendary character name, really, is it? - Yeah, Elliot. - Look how cool that looks, that pull out, the establishing shot of that town. - Yeah, it looks, I hope it's actually fun. - The demo's fun, I enjoyed it. - Cool. - You played the demo? - Mm-hmm. - What, you were fast. - And then does it have slimes? - Mm-hmm. - Not a dragon. - It's not a drag way. - Not a drag way. - But do you start it, like, little dinky enemies, and there's a lot of them, or is it pretty interesting? - No, it's fun. It's also puzzly. - Oh, interesting. - Okay. - The other thing to note is that the folks that do, the arcade archives are now doing console archives, so we're bringing back old console games. - I saw that. - Which is cool. - They ran out of obscure maps for you, man. - Like, I know they haven't. - They, they haven't. - I think there's no way to have. - Every time a new one comes out, I'm like, man, like, we don't even have this one in our database. It's like, some obscure Japan-only arcade game. And so, now they're gonna do it with console games, like, the first games that they're gonna be doing cool borders, which, okay, that's known PlayStation. Like, that was an early PlayStation game. - Yeah, but then they're also doing what you got in two, which, that's also very known. - But then they go, and then, what I'm on for, that's like-- - I'm on. - Any Famicon, 1986, but, I mean, I love that there, and this is my criticism with Konami. Like, if Konami would translate some of the Super NES going on games, they would be, there's some of the best third party platformers on the Super Famicom. And like-- - Oh, would they have to be translated to-- - Yeah, yeah, yeah, they have, they have city scenes where sometimes you have to like show somebody a pass to get by and like-- - I thought that's what kept them ninja mystical. - Yeah, no, there's, there's a lot of, there's a lot of town stuff in those. But, yeah, I mean, they, they're apparently releasing Doraemon for the first time in the West. - Oh, that's coming out here now? - Yeah, I miss that, I thought it was just-- - This one is not coming out, but I thought it was just-- - Yeah, ninja guy in two and cool borders. - No, Doraemon is a TBA game. It's coming too. - Okay. - And for the first time in the West, so-- - That can be a robot cat, everybody. - That, let's be realistic too. Like, obviously, messing with old code is not fun, but like, fans have translated many of these games, and it did not take them years, and it would not be very costly to translate any S games with limited texts. It just don't have that much. There's, one of the difficulties that Japanese are very compact in English is not, right? But-- - Isn't that the mother three thing that like, people fan translated, but they never-- - Yeah, it's impossible to translate. Come on, give me a break, like, seriously, call a fan, and they'll do it for you in two weeks. - I mean, that's why Reggie retired.
- Yeah, exactly. - You're going to take it any more. - We're like one month away from, you know, AI being able to completely just code that game for free for you. - You know what, you're right. - And credits. - And that would be a good use of AI because they are fantastic games that we're never translated and released here. So, we're team going one games. (upbeat music) - Well, speaking of AI, Sony patent system to generate AI podcasts. In the voices of your favorite PlayStation characters. - I think it'll be so natural. - Who would have, do you think crados would have a man of sphere podcasts? - Yeah, that's like, you're going to be listening to crados hosting a podcast? - Talking about politics. - So, I have some stuff to read here. This is from a patent submitted in mid-2024 and it claims the system dubbed LLM-based generative podcasts for gamers. We'll generate a reading from the patent, unique personalized podcasts of news that a particular gamer would find interesting and could be presented in the voice of a video game character from a game already played by the respective gamer. It appears this could be offered to players on the home screen when they power on their PlayStation console. Video game platforms currently lack the ability to provide unique and targeted content to gamers to update the gamers about things that are happening on the platform. There are currently no adequate solutions to the foregoing computer-related technological problem. That's patent-speak for, "There's got to be another way." In some examples, if the gaming platform wants to highlight specific games from players to experiment with, the podcast can suggest different games to different players based on a cluster to which the relevant player is assigned. These game recommendations can also be provided in the generative AI podcasts in game-specific character voices, no less. Recommendations may be prioritized and jump out a little more to the listener to get the listener to note the recommendation. You know, a voice actor did the voices for those. It's kind of brutal. So this is not Aloy telling you about her day finding herbs, but she already does what you play the game. That's all she talks about. So it's not that. It's that it will tell you all of the e-slop games you could be playing. No, it'll be like in the shop and the voice of Kratos. It'll be like, "Boy, you should try Cold-Sept Hall of Beauty." Did you play Cold-Sept Boy? I didn't comment her wild 360. I think something the best. I can't think of a more soulless experience than an AI-generated podcast discussing my recent trophies. (laughing) It's good. Look, it's always tough to judge stuff like this because if you go back in history, things that seem stupid and impossible become commonplace over time, right? Like I can't tell you how. If you remember when the iPhone was announced, people said, "No, I want buttons," right? It was as simple as that. It's like, "Don't get rid of the buttons. I need the buttons." You cannot use a phone without buttons. You need to tap numbers. And then now you will never think about it. And like, if you watch movies like Blade Runner, where Harrison Ford or what's his name, Gosling, who was in the second name-- Right, Gosling. Yeah, what Gosling talks to an AI character, and she feels like a real person because she's played by a real person. Like the more natural it gets, you know, it's just inevitable that we'll go down that road that these things will get better. And that when you're playing-- That's bad for you, Parrick, because they painted it. I know, I can't do it. But like, I imagine like the future Witcher game, like the NPC dialogue is generated on the fly. And like, we'll make it interesting is that it sucks, man, that's the worst. I know, but it's reacting to the things you already did. And so as long as there's good story structure and personalities and all that stuff, I'm just saying, like, don't knock it. I hate the thought of, you know, voice actors being replaced. And hopefully people get compensated when they turn Kratos's voice into now a podcast, right? But like, it's-- - What empty calories? - It's empty calories. - You're gonna put it. - I hear you. But I feel-- - It's what we don't need people consuming, you know, the thoughts and words that have never been thought before. Like, there's just no, there's no, which by the way, like the Pope said that recently, I didn't, that's not my quote. Like, but it just, it, like, so there's radiant quests and like Skyrim, right? And, you know, and fall out. And then in the begin, like, you know, for the first week that those games were out, people were like, oh, man, this is amazing. Like, they keep sending me on all these quests and like, just, you know, the game never ends. And then people figured out that it was this treadmill that never ends-- - That's what-- - Yeah, that's what counts me off of Fallout 4. - Yeah. And once you're out of sort of handcrafted content, like this, this is kind of a hoity, toity perspective of art, is that it's like, you know, you having a conversation and engaging with the artist. It's you engaging with the creatives that created that, right? And like, I don't ever really put that much thought into it. I'm just like, well, I'm, you know, I'm here to have a good time. I want to play the video game. But then I realize that there actually is some truth to that. And I do want my video games to kind of challenge me and say something and have a perspective because if it's just AI creating something that's tailored for me that no one has ever seen before, then I don't, I'm not interested, you know. I want, I want to experience something that someone else made. Otherwise, I, otherwise, there's no point. - This is my argument against Mario Maker. I don't want to, but the Mario Maker is made by creators. - Yeah, Mario Maker, great example of things can go off the rails. But like, yeah, I don't want to be Sarah Conner here, but like I think I fear eventually, Justin, you won't be able to tell the difference. - Right, like that's the point. - So that's the point. - I think the issue is that like, if you have an NPC, like that's like, recognizes that you're in a banana costume and they didn't need to write that because you designed the banana costume yourself. That's pretty interesting, but all they have today is off-handedly say like, wow, you look like an idiot banana and then get on with a written dialogue. Like that's, you know, if it's indistinguishable, but then also like, we all played, you know, like games when there was text and stuff like that. I'm interested if games can trick me into thinking that it's written the stuff, but like it says, we're not even close to that, right? - We're not even close. I don't necessarily want that anyway. But that's not even what this is about. This is about podcasts, about information and that is a trend in the world right now where people study or especially, you know, for school where they digest a textbook and then listen to people talk about it as a podcast. That is what kids do now. - It's like, this is getting ahead of like, well, how do I make a decision about something? I want to hear it in podcasts. - Yeah, personally, I cannot free myself from the artifice of that when I see that, right? Like, there's, it's this sort of uncanny valley thing, but, you know, obviously younger audiences. - I'm very torn between, you know, you're right, where like, you know, people didn't, like it's the Henry Ford quote, right? Like before the car was invented, if you asked people what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse. So like, there's an element of like, you know, you need to tell people and show people what they want. But then, but then I, but then, like, I'm at war with myself 'cause in the other half of my brain, it's like, they're solving a problem that no one is asking for this. Zero PlayStation owners are like, this is what I want on my home screen. - Well, I don't believe this. - I don't believe this in all the levels advocate here. What you were all, I just asked for, was for game development time to not take five years. And one way to do that is to fake all the audio. So, you know, it is, it is filling a problem, unfortunately. And I'm not saying that's a good thing. And it's not a good solution. - Well, to be fair, Sony Patton's weird things all the time. And, you know, sometimes you dip at things so others don't do it, right? - Yeah. - Yeah. - That's true. - So advertisements, they want, they say, if we can get people listening to this 10 minute podcast about what's new in the e-shop, then we can, then we can sell a spot in the middle of that to Activision when the new Call of Duty comes out. - Yeah. - An example. - Let's go buy Microsoft, but whatever. - Yeah, then. - To be clear, Justin's point about this not being something that that's, you know, that nobody asked for. I totally get that he's starting about the podcast thing. But I was just doing a call back to the previous thing. Where unfortunately, people are looking at game development times and saying, like, how are we going to shorten all this and make this easy on us? That's, this stuff is not cutting dry, like, you know, so there's a movement with gamers. And I'm painting with a broad brush. Gamers aren't a monolith. But generally speaking, they're anti-AI, right? Like, they don't want it in their games. We see it in our comments. We see it on YouTube. But it's like, but it's not, there's nuance here of like, software has been putting trees in your open world games forever for 20 years, you know? And like, you click a button and it generates 1,000 different versions of an oak tree that are non-identical and then plops them into your world for you. So like, you know, like, that's generative, like that's generative, you know, content creation, right? So like, where does, where does, you know, people need to have a kind of reckoning with themself or maybe they don't. But like, you know how everything's, like, you're totally right. Everything's a culture war too. And so you're just saying, like, you know, like all these, like, people are like, anti-AI, probably, maybe not all of them. I can't wait for the pro AI, like, you know, political movement where it's like, no, I want everything to be AI. It's so much cooler than humans. Yeah. And you've been fully fooled by the robots. So I think part of it, and part of it is a narrative, like that's where people get a little bit queasy feeling. It's like, yeah, use software to generate, you know, my trees and, you know, my biomes and Minecraft, but maybe, maybe not to be creating sort of endless narrative experiences for me is where things start to feel. A little bit icky. Yeah. I mean, it can't take five years to write a story for a video game. I don't believe it or I don't think it should. Can't take five years to design your characters. They certainly are not that good. George R. Martin's taken a lot longer. Yeah, sure. Oh, anyway, I just think they're AI. George R. Martin taking shots here randomly at the end of an episode of Game Scoop. Do you think every day he's like, what would, what?
Do your chat DVD, what would Sansa do next in this scenario? (all laughing) - I finished the book. - I finished the book. - Okay, well on that note, I am really, really liking a night of the Seven Kingdoms, by the way. - It's good, great, yeah. - It's really, really good. Okay. (upbeat music) - That brings us to video game 20 questions. Firstly, we have a little anecdote from Charlie Gadson and San Diego who says to answer Sam's question at the end of last week's episode. Yes, the team is on a winning streak. Four wins in a row to start the year. An average of 19 questions needed. That's your average. So you asked it, you get any other 18 or 20 questions. - What? - The average can't be higher than that. - Oh, 'cause, okay, it's wait. We could get it in 20. - Yeah. - I think I played Destiny with Charlie Gadson like 10 years ago. And Charlie says, all four games picked this year have been from after the year 2000. So do with that information. - With that it done. - With that it done. - We're gonna get going on, and then Eric screw us. - All I said to Damon was the director, then Japanese director had going on in it, and then he had a funny look on his face, and I thought I was boring him, but he was already calculating what to replace him. - Yeah, and we know Damon, it's so easy. He switched to Bomberman, so we can get this in one question. - Yeah, okay. - It probably is Super Bomberman. - Okay, it's a Bomberman collection kind of. - Let's find out. Our suggestions comes from Rodel, also in San Diego, and my son and I listen to the show every week. Recently he discovered Redacted, and is in love with the Redacted. He keeps bugging me, he keeps bugging me to suggest Redacted for 20 questions, so here's my shot. And with that, let the question begin. - So if he's like, he'd recently discovered Pokemon, and he's obsessed with the Pokemon. - Yeah. - He's like, what would you be a Bomberman? - He's obsessed with the gritty realistic reboot of Bomberman. - Yes. - Okay, did this game come out in the '70s, '80s or '90s? - Yes. - Does the game title have a number in it? - Yes. - That's a great question. - It's a question. - I thought we weren't allowed to ask that question. - Really? - Well. - You don't ask, does the game start with the litter? - Start with an A? - Yeah. (laughing) - Wait, so it came out in the '70s, '80s or '90s? - Mm-hmm. - Okay. - How's world all this one? - So good dad, letting his kid discover a classic. Thank you. - Sonic 2. - Yes. - Mega Man maybe? - Yeah. Okay, did this game originally come out on the 16-bit console? - No. - It's not Sonic 2. - Is this on the NES? - Yes. - Could be Mega Man's, you're right. - Did this, was this made by Capcom? - Yes. - That's five. - Whoa, whoa. - Okay, let's try to get this. - Really quick. - Everybody calm down. - Should we do six Mega Man? - It can't be Mega Man 1. - But, nope. But hold on, Capcom made more than just the Mega Man, you know, it made ghosts and gobbling. - The games with sequels. - We know. - Yeah. - So there's not that many. There's like Chip and L, Duck Tales. - And not that many with two in the title from Capcom on the NES, two or more. - I just named them. - Yeah. Or should we ask if it's 2D Side Squirtler? - Why are we doing this? - Oh, it is. - It is, it is. - It is. - Yeah. - Is it a Mega Man game? - Yes. - You don't think his son was obsessed with Mickey Mouse could bathe? - No. (both laughing) - I was. - I don't know. - I didn't accept. - Does this game have an even number in the title? - Yes. - All right. - I don't know where to, I don't know, I don't have a clever way. It's not Mega Man 3 or 5. - I'm not a, I'm not a Mega Man guy. - That's Mega Man 2. Let's just admit it in the Mega Man 2. - It's Mega Man 2, 4 is 6. - Yeah. But like, is there, is there, do you guys know any as Mega Man? Is there one that's notable? Because he wouldn't pick one that's like. - Two yes, two yes. - It is absolutely two. I just don't have a clever way to like four and six have Russian them. So we can, and two doesn't. - Is that true? - Yeah. - Rush is in three. Oh, but we know it's not three. - Three forward. - Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. Does this have Rush the Dog in it? - No. - Is it Mega Man 2? - Yep. Mega Man 2. - Hey. - You guys were so fast. - That's ridiculous. You've brought down your average now. - Both. - An interesting thing that happened. - You know, we did we brought down the average. - For many years, for like 20 years, Mega Man 2, it's like, oh, that's the best one. Mega Man 2 is the best one. And then there was this, my note, this contingent of people that like, I actually think Mega Man 3 might be better. - Really? - Yeah, there's been an all-mactually contingent for Mega Man 3. And now I swear if you were to chart like over the last decade, like Mega Man 3 is now getting its flowers. And more people are like, maybe that's the best one. - Consumer sentiment. You do get to fight the Mega Man 2 bosses in the end of Mega Man 3, which is an unbelievable feat for NES. - I've always had such a blind spot for Mega Man games because my first Mega Man game was on the Super Famicom, not on the. - Super Famicom in NES. - Document Seven. - Yes. - And I played and I was like, "Hey." - I kind of believe Sam Playborn spoiled another game by telling us about the end of Mega Man 3. - It starts with the joke that you wouldn't get then, because Mega Man is not wearing his hat in the beginning. And before he runs off to start the level, his robot friend gives him one of the construction worker hats to put on. - Okay. - And then he's like, "Well, maybe try this hat instead." So you playing with him must be like, "What the heck is going on?" - Yeah, I had no idea what it was going on. - But that hat looked a lot safer. - Well, it was the anecdote that his kid was like. - He discovered the Mega Man collection and he's been in love with the kids. - That's cool. - Ah. So that's cool. - That's cool. That's great. I mean, like, I did this when my kids were little, we would go back to, we hooked up the Super NES and just would go back to older games. And you know, like, got it. Kids need to be classically trained. - We, Parani on our team, we have a coworker, Mitchell, whose kid is obsessed with Mega Man as well. And I've seen him playing Mega Man the background during like meetings and stuff. He's very, very young, just a couple of years old. So this is a thing. Mega Man can appeal to the young still. - That's funny just 'cause my daughters have absolutely no like they just cry whenever they die in a game. So like, you know, they're not interested in anything like that. - Yeah. - 'Cause it was like 19 or 20 when I stopped crying when I did. - Yeah, in games. - Yeah. - They get it from their dad. - I'm the one who was crying with hard games. I make my son beat them. - Dude, you could cry playing Karen. It's so brutal if you don't like that game. It's like, I really just spent 20 minutes, like meticulously, like planning this thing and then dies just like so. - I don't mind the games where I, it's hard and I die because I was being an idiot and not careful enough. It's just like, you know, as you get older, your reflexes get a little slower. So, you know, like, I was very bad. - Keep going. - Well, these games, the Mega Man games, were harder in Japan. They made easier versions for Americans. - I see. - Which, okay, well that explains it all. 'Cause I was sad little thing. - 'Cause I was young when I played this. When KINGO is getting Nintendo Switch time, I often find them playing Pilot Wings 64. Or, or Star Fox 64, that's it. - I mean, you like playing those two games. - That first 64 is really good. - Well, nicely job. Thank you for the suggestion, Rodel. Viewers, listeners, if you have your own suggestions for video game 20 questions, email them to me at the email address,
[email protected]. And hey, listen, right now you can get humble choice for just 14.99 and score a curated bundle of PC games for February, including Resident Evil Village, date everything, core keeper, starvators, steamroll build, scroll with a gun, bust simulator 21, and big helmet heroes. This month's choice supports in power, a charity whose mission is to move people from poverty through tech skills, training, and quality job placement. Head to humblebundle.com to start playing today and support a good cause. And that's all the scoops that we have for you this week. Thank you, Pear, thank you Sam, thank you Justin, thank you to Jobert working behind the scenes to make this episode possible. My name is Damon, this is IJ Game Scoop, and try to do that. Play station AI podcast. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) - No promter. - No promter. - Yes, no promter. - Oh, I don't think we want that heat. - By the way, Gamescoop is like Game of Thrones now with all you spin-offs. You got like brought back Game Scoop, which I watched it was awesome, that was really fun. - We're gonna do, we're gonna plan a version, Sam had that great idea to gamify it like a IJ in live and have two teams where they work together. - So a mark of a good video is like if my son actually is interested, like, I was watching it and he just came over and then he stood there and he watched the entire Game Scoop and he was greatly immune. - Did he guess any of the games? - No, he was like, this is bullshit. How can you tell it from those bricks? (laughing) - Those bricks, those bricks. - This isn't a version of bricks. (upbeat music)
We're not going to talk about it on the show then, but did you see that the game is loosely like a chrono trigger alive alive, kind of knockoff? Which one? We'll talk about the HC2D game, the Elliott. Elliott, so just to be clear, Elliott, was already announced before. For the show, I want to talk about that. Yeah, yeah. You want to talk about it. No, Elliott was announced before, but I. Is that the one you're talking about? I wish. Yeah, I wish. It looks great. It's never make a good name for a game. Yeah, it's a bad name. Is this something to show me? Yeah. What else was in the direct? That direct was so boring, I thought. I mean, they showed off that really cool 80s anime style. Oh, that one's good. That one's good. Yeah, yeah. The anime one. Yeah. I'm a little. I try not to be too taken in by. It's like, yeah, the art style is incredible, but it's like. But it is what everybody wants right now, right? It's like the co-op, couch co-op. Yeah, look at that. It looked really fun. The co-op action looked really fun to me. I'm surprised that somebody in Japan kind of looked at these western trendy games that are winning awards, right? And they're like, "Let's make one of those and make it our way." Okay. Smart. We good? Yes, again. I was telling Joe about that. My wife and I lived in Japan. It was like all of the TV shows were this nonsense. It was like. Yeah. Popular. Jesus Christ. And like, it's just. Cannot. Like, I think they all die and we just never hear about it. Yeah. Yeah. Is there a point to this? Is something going to happen? Or are they just doing it just to do it? It says. It says challenge complete. And now it says. Like, can you do it? Can you be wrapped up like a mummy? Like, of course you can. But like. Yeah. Well, you don't understand what the goal is of this challenge. Yeah. I don't. That Pharaoh is talking. I think she now needs to say things and they need to be able to understand what she says. Okay. And that makes sense. Imagine you have to come up with these ideas. I mean. Have you all watched or started the new season of shrinking, which I think is good? I haven't watched it yet, no. It is such a Ted Lasso successor. It's like. Feel good, but really funny. Oh, good. That type of stuff. But doesn't fear as far into sentimentality that Ted Lasso does. It doesn't. Yeah. No. No. It does in like, you know, maybe like in a counseling session or whatever, but like the main characters are all well done. It has fucking Brett. It has the co-creator of Ted Lasso. And he also co-created that's the big British guy that plays Roy Kent. Oh, yeah. Yeah. He's on the show now. Yeah. He's been a main character since the first season. Oh, God. This is where they blow cockroaches into each other's mind. No. This is too gross. Oh, Jesus Christ. No way. It's too gross. This is terrible. This is terrible. You think since this is all Japanese TV, like by the end, like every Japanese person ends up on two of these shows at some point in their life eventually. I think about that with great British bake off. It's like that island's not that big. Like and they get 12 bakers every year, like they must run through them eventually. Yeah. Well, I, you saw that problem with have you ever watched Lego masters? Yeah. They ran out all the other masters. First two scenes. That's so funny. Amazing builds. I tune into fifth season and they're like building shit. My kids build them. What is this? Oh, this is so bad. So what you're saying is this show was good until they ran out of cockroach blowers. That's right. I'm just saying every, every Japanese person ends up on it. Oh, no. No. What the fuck, man? Don't we take it off. Why is it a cockroach? Use like a cricket or something like that. Sometimes they use crickets. I think it's like a Jerusalem cricket. It might be a cricket, but it's a bug. Yeah. It's a bug. I hate this. I want to go back to the German cutting things in half show. Yeah. The German shopping cart challenge. I 100% cut a bit out of that way this week and showed my wife, and she's like, what are you doing? I'm like, you're German, right? You understand. Too bad. That's a long set. Bring it to me. Too bad. You got to show them the German marble track making the marble land on a toy train challenge. Oh, what? Yeah. That's excellent. It's like launching off of a little toy onto a train. Yeah. There's a really convoluted marble track and you have to time the marble so it falls onto a container on the back of a toy train. We've all played video games with that exact challenge. Yeah. But you're not allowed to see it when the other team does it. You have to be blindfolded and then, you know, so like you're getting closer and closer. When I get really, really stressed out at work, I sometimes will watch like marble track, like Ruben Goldberg marble track videos on YouTube. You know what? That's been ruined, though. Everything more than model trains. That's like the height of German culture. German board games. German board games. Loves model trains, but yeah, board games would be better. Okay. Here we go. Cool. It's called Eisenbahn. It did a time it right now. It's way too fast. Oh, no. It's slowing down. So cool. Whoa. Oh. Wow. Remember, there's different points for the different points. I see. I see. Number one. Okay. If we already, I do need to, Kingo has his first baseball practice tonight. Oh, okay. Cool. Well, you can watch this instead, right? Yeah. We'll just do this instead of scoop. Maybe we should do a practice. Maybe we should do like react scoop sometime. We should. God. Now we can't use this clip there. Well, I'll just cut that part out or I'll believe it. I could even believe it. That's even better.
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