Game Scoop! 858: Our Favorite Video Game Spin-Offs

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And joining me here in studio is Per Schneider. What's up, Damon? I'll tell you what's up. We're about to scoop it up. Joining us also is Sam Claiborne. Scoop it up. And Justin Davis. Scoop. We've got a great show for you this week. We've got some updated sales out on the best-selling games of the year and, indeed, of all time. We're all playing a bunch of hot new games that are out right now. But the one I'm most into right now, you all may not know about. So I'll spill the beans on that. And we will also share our favorite video game, Spinner. But first, Justin, you like the Kingdom Come Deliverance games. Yeah, who doesn't? And you like Lord of the Rings. Yes. Well, have I got some news for you, Justin. What if I told you the makers of the Kingdom Come Deliverance games are making a Middle Earth game? Whoa! The first question you have to ask is, is this only about Gollum, right? Yeah, once again, another game. About Gollum. A movie and a game. Yeah. This is so cool. Big AAA open-world Middle Earth game. Amazing. Finally. From people that make really beloved medieval games. I was just at home last week thinking, in the shower, it'd be so cool if Intelligent Systems took Fire Emblem and just made it a Lord of the Rings game. That's a good idea. All of your units are like, you know, it's like a fellowship and all of that. A dwarf. It'd be so cool. But this is second best. I'll take this. It's the second best. Second best. Yeah, that would be really fun. I mean, they also announced that they're making another Kingdom Come game, too. So it's like, I like that their little graphic where they announced it, too, is like, you know, new Kingdom Come game, you know, new Middle Earth RPG. So it's like, obviously the Middle Earth RPG is the big news. Maybe they didn't even say RPG, but like open-world game. But I like that for the Kingdom Come fans, they're also like, you know, letting them know, okay, we're not done with this series. So I have a pitch for the Lord of the Rings setting. It's in either the first or the second age, but it's about a group of the first settlers of Numenorean men encountering Middle Earth from coming from Numenor and not knowing about the various things that are happening there. They don't know about orcs and Mordors, but let alone they don't know about, you know, Fangorn Forest. They don't know about the dwarves and the Blue Mountains and the mines. And then that's what you're discovering. That everything feels new and a little bit scary because it's like, it's a, it's, you know, a weird new world that they fled to. See, I want the ring to be in it. You know why? Because it's quite cool. It is quite cool. It has a great song. It's got a great leitmotif, right? Yeah, that is a question. When you take the Lord of the Rings out of Middle Earth, that's just such an unknown quantity for most of us. Yeah, it's just going to have cool. It's going to have cool dragons and swords and shit. It's fine. All right. It's going to, it's going to, it's going to be great. There's such a glow up from Kingdom Come 1 to Kingdom Come 2. I've mentioned on the show before. It's kind of like the glow up from Witcher 1 to Witcher 2. So it's like that developer, Warhorse Studios, like, I think they're on a tear. So I really, I have very, very high hopes for this. How long was between, how long was, was there between the two of Kingdom Come? So many years. At least, I think like six years. Well, I'm glad because we'll have time in retirement. To play this when it's done. Yeah. For real. What's so funny is that, you know, video games have over the years, even before the Peter Jackson movies, copied everything from Lord of the Rings, right? It's either D&D or Lord of the Rings. And D&D obviously took liberally from Lord of the Rings. It's like, it's because the books have in it, the snow level, the lava level, the water level, the forest level, the cave level with collapsing columns, right? And like, it's going to be interesting how, like, now that we're getting more Lord of the Rings projects, like how they actually differentiate themselves from. Other games. Yeah. Well, there, we have been getting more Lord of the Rings games. I don't think we've gotten one that's really hit yet so far because there's the cozy Shire one. That's right. That didn't work out. The Golem one didn't work out. I mean, EA had one of the best ones many years ago. EA had a bunch of good ones. Oh, you're right. There was a Dwarf one too. Also didn't, didn't make much of a splash. The Moria kind of sim game. That's right. Yeah. Return to Moria. That's it. Yeah. Well, so Justin, I think you're the one here that spent the most time with Kingdom Come: Deliverance, and you've told us some like great stories of your time in those games here. On the show. It's like, what is, what do those games, what, how, how does that inform what you expect out of a Lord of the Rings game for them? Well, they really, they're sort of like Cyberpunk in that they really commit to their first person viewpoint and do a lot with it. Like they're, they're very, very hardcore about that. Although not to the point, like the cut scenes are third person. So they're not as crazy about Cyberpunk, but they, they're also, they're a little bit Kingdom Come. What I like about it is that they, they're kind of a little bit more Simmy of, you know, you're. character is terrible at everything until you practice it and level it up. Like it's a medieval peasant simulator is how I've described it in the past of like, you can't sword fight, you're weak, you can't carry anything, you can't do anything. And like, so the game kind of feels bad for like 10 hours, but then that's just contrasted with like, as you start to get more powerful and you start to get stronger and you start to level up your skills, like it just feels that much better as you work your way through it. So for Lord of the Rings, it's like, you know, I think that they're probably going to make something that's a little bit more accessible and a little bit more Skyrim like, I mean, the developer is definitely capable of, you know, they're talented enough that they can do that. So that'll be the thing that I'll be excited to see is like, you know, do they want it to be that kind of like bracing, you know, kind of like uncompromising game design? Are they going to go for something that's a little bit, you know, broader in its appeal? Well, I mean, the fellowship goes through that part where it feels bad for 10 hours. Well, Tom Bombadil sings a lot and his wife dances. Yeah, that's a side quest. You don't have to do that one. Yeah. Apparently Stephen Colbert is writing that entire movie right now. That's right. That's right. Missing pieces. I mean, yeah, isn't. Wait, wait, do you say that? I didn't realize that about the cyberpunk comparison, but that's like, because first person is such an important part of it. Plus the beginning of the game, you wake up and then they say, well met samurai. Huzzah. Yes, exactly. Where does, where does this take place? Where does it take place? Where does kingdom come to take place? It's like Poland or something. Yeah. Like, you know, the ancient, um, like Bavaria, you know, whatever modern. Bavaria? We have a Bavarian expert right here. You and I. Yeah. Like the kingdom of Bohemia. So it's probably closest to like Czech Republic, I guess. Yeah. Interesting. Umen. I did not know this. Now I have to play this. I didn't know this was. Yeah. You didn't know that was the setting? This was, this was like. - I thought it was like made up. up england crap like everything else no it's and it's actually super historical like there's major characters in the game that like existed in real life and have wikipedia pages and stuff okay on that samurai man i should have been on game scoop when you talked about it last for the last two years you told a story about how you like went out drinking with like a priest and you spent all night and he had like a big sermon to give the next morning but he was too hungover in the morning so you had to give the sermon it's good yeah that's a really famous question but your speech skill is at five out of 100 so you can't yeah yeah you can totally bomb it it came out when i was super busy and then i ignored it and fell behind well but i'm super busy with this i'm intrigued and it's a it's a real rags to riches story like the main character really uh you know he just starts out it's like luke skywalker he starts out as this like whiny little jerk but then by the end you kind of like really love him nice i'm mary sue you cool it's uh something to look forward to whenever they can get that one out the door lord of the rings open world rpg from warhorse studios buying a car is a big deal so you shouldn't go in blind with dealership mode on the car gurus app it's like taking an expert with you to the lot you get real-time price checks and comparisons right from your phone it's everything you need at your fingertips so you can feel confident you're getting the best deal with car gurus you can describe what you're looking for and in your own words simply type what you want and guru instantly shows you real available listings that match your exact needs dealership mode on the car gurus app puts you in control you can compare cars side by side check pricing and estimate your final cost so you can navigate the dealership with confidence with more than four million listings car gurus has the biggest selection of cars so it's 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coverage varies c-mint mobile.com all right we've got updated sales data uh the latest from circana for the formerly known as npd remember when we get the mpd email pair and it was like it was every game like a list of tens of thousands of games yeah we've talked about this before but you could see like bubsy for super nintendo yeah it's like four and a half copies the problem is that it was an industry reporting tool you weren't allowed to report on it as not like that yeah and so we had to cancel our subscription to be able to report on it and had it leaked to us instead yeah anyway circana has a stat for april and the best selling game april i was a little bit surprised to see was tomodachi life yeah i was yeah they changed their reporting methods right where like they were i don't i think before they weren't counting digital switch sales and now they are something like that i don't know they have they have projected switch digital sales yeah and did this come out on switch one and two um yeah i think it's a double yeah yeah um because i did i i have heard that the there are there is a younger audience that is enjoying this which would have to be switch one yeah so i i was actually not surprised like if i can tout our internal tool we use ign playlist where users can flag what games they're playing and tomodachi life was sitting at number one for like two weeks it was at the top and i was even doubting it a little bit i'm like is it really that that big because you don't hear that much chatter around it but that might just be out of our circle of people so yeah that's that's awesome it's really fun i don't know if you guys tried it no no no oh my god crusty old man yeah it's look i i think is it a game yeah it is it is it's like it's like a life sim so you know like you build a town you expand things you feed people you get people together and then it sort of becomes a sitcom of characters interacting and saying really the worst things because you are in control and there are no filters in this game but that also means you cannot share any gameplay footage with a built-in tool like with every other switch game which is is a bit of a bummer but you know obviously they didn't want uh you know they didn't want uh real life historical characters doing things that they maybe hadn't done in real life wait they nintendo disables like the share button in this it's one of the only games where you cannot even though you cannot save a gameplay clip and share it well you have to use your phone what tom's been doing with his yoshi naming characters you can see what why they disable it so you establish that this is a video game uh also i had a question um did they pay too much money for their licensed music so that couldn't possibly be oh look it's me uh it does not have licensed music why is everybody harping on that like harmonix was an indie dev and famously created guitar hero i'm like it's the mixtape joke i know but part of the mixtape uh i get it but like extended universe of conspiracy i'm not saying i'm confused but i'm confused by why okay okay you got the joke i'm glad you know i got the joke but you're not laughing you're laughing at the joke it's become painful man it's so funny we forgot to laugh sam yeah wow that ganon's amazing that was good oh the creation tool this is like it really makes you lament the passing of the me creation tools because they they upgraded them they got you can actually draw on the faces now so you can you can really create like just the silliest and best looking characters it's great thank you for flushing they're saying yeah maybe well you can make anything a topic of discussion right so it's um it's like a weird little game from this it's just a lot of talk about pooping with most people yeah i get i get that was this full price i i don't know what is full price it wasn't it wasn't as cheap as starfox i believe it's 120 it is at least 400 for this game yeah i think it's so funny where some people like this there's this gta six price debate of like what's it gonna be priced i'm like guys mario kart was eighty dollars i think yeah that's true gta six is gonna be yeah but mario kart was worth it we're all still playing that right look at that logan plant me yeah that's a good look that's pretty good yeah you also cannot share your me's like they're so protective of it which sucks so you have to like send people your stuff i mean you can't just send it to your friend well tell me about you live best-selling game in april uh we've talked a little bit about sorrows how uh it was sort of struggling to find too much of an audience but it still cracked the top ten it was still the ninth best-selling game of april so what does that tell us you can sell 300 000-ish copies and still crack the top ten yeah cool not terrible so the top five of the year so far are resident evil nine and number one crimson desert mlb the show 26 pokemon pokopia and wwe 2k26 so three pretty good three good single-player games in there and pokopia was awesome if you didn't play i lied it's very good yeah pacopia i was reflecting on this i think it's my game of the year frontrunner wow okay for what i've played personally good keep in mind i'm not a big resident evil guy but like out of the stuff that i've played the copia was incredible yeah it's nice to have post-apocalyptic games again i don't agree that's my game of the year but it's incredible resident evil is my game of the year so far you know uh but tomodachi is already at number nine for the best-selling game of the year ninth best-selling game of the year the switch 2 is the best-selling hardware of the year we'll see what happens now with the price going up well yeah but they gave people such a long runway it's not until september right uh maybe by by by choice right yeah they want a positive story but yeah everything else got so expensive i wasn't surprised to see switch to um reclaim the throne there after playstation was catching up and then ps5 is getting really close to 100 million units it's it's incredible right it is like it doesn't seem right its current lifetime sales are a little bit ahead of where the ps4 was at this point in its life right So it's doing a little bit better than PS4, which I think is surprising. Probably because we had three in my household. I switched to a Pro, but we had two before because one was for the kids so that they don't bug me. So it's probably mostly me. I do think about that. I think about these console install bases. Well, mostly the original Switch because they had the original and then the OLED model and then the sort of handheld-only model. And it's like, yeah, the Switch Lite. And so it kind of – there's like an asterisk next to console install data. Yeah, but the reality is that the handheld machines like the Switch obviously being a hybrid are just more likely to be multiple units per household devices, right? I know. No, for real. I mean, the older my kids get, it's like I can't take my Switch with me on work trips anymore because my children lose their minds. Your kids don't have Switches, huh? Not a Switch 2. Wow. But they have Switch 1s. Oh, well. Look, I don't mean to – I'm not saying you're a bad dad, Justin. He's just asking questions. I'm just doing research, okay? He did his own research. Just asking questions. Yeah, yeah. Well, we also have breaking news. This just went up moments before we started recording. Red Dead Redemption 2 has overtaken Wii Sports in best-selling games of all time. It just leapfrogged over Wii Sports. Yeah. Which is more notable than it just – I mean, Wii Sports was a packet, right? Yeah. So that's a little different, I think. Red Dead has sold more copies in the last year than in any 12-month period since launch. It's like its first year. Yeah. So I don't know why it got a big bump over the past year. Yeah, especially wouldn't the numbers go down? Unless people are just getting excited for GTA 6 and they're like, this is their last big game from Rockstar. Wasn't it? Yeah. I remember when it first came out, there was all this drama. Drama chatter about it being boring and all that and like – I mean, I think people – I think it's pretty universally beloved. I personally am in the camp – I don't think the game feels that great to actually control. Wow. I don't think it has great game feel, but that's just me. Yeah. It's heavy. It is heavy. Right? Like the – it's not nimble. It's a little too – Acrobatic. Too far into simulation for me. That's just me. I do think it's one of the best video game stories I've ever experienced. No, I can see that feel-wise, but I just think the sort of freedom – the realism of what you can do and the realism of watching it when you're playing it is just unparalleled. It's so good. I love this game so much. It's really good at making the gameplay problems melt away. Yeah. Well, it's at 85 million copies now. Amazing. Well-deserved, though. That's a lot. By the way, just imagine like what a heart cell it was to say, hey, kids don't watch Westerns on TV and in the movies anymore. Let's make a Western game. It is very notable. It is very notable that these games blew up to this degree. It's crazy. But just the conviction to like, you know, just make this game with just an almost endless budget, you know, is just – and then, I mean, look, it was never a failure, right? But like it didn't – you know, it wasn't that crazy of a success in its first year, but it just – you know, you just said it, Damon. It just never stopped. It never stopped selling. Yeah, it didn't have that universal appeal that GTA has. Everybody loves crime. I keep wanting to go back to – I wanted to go back to Red Dead 2, but I wanted to wait for like the native next-gen versions, and they just never happened. It'll happen. They'll get remade, I'm sure. It would be nice to get – It's almost over. It would be lovely to get late story DLC and jump back in. Oh, man. Or some zombies, you know? Not such an easy one to do story DLC for, I guess. No. Undead Nightmare. It could really work for this one. I wish they would have done Undead Nightmare. But with a twist. After GTA 6, you think they'll do Red Dead 3? It's the third best-selling game of all time. We'll all be dead. Table tennis. I don't think so, only because Red Dead Online didn't pop. I think Rockstar – you know, Rockstar secretly made – like we talk about live service games and we talk about Fortnite, but it's like secretly GTA Online is the live service game. They could do it. They need more. They need more people. They need another studio. They need to expand. I always wanted them to do another alien invasion game. Like an open-world Body Harvest. And that was like DMA Design, right? It was. It's Rockstar. Yeah, well, who's still there that made Body Harvest? All of them. Everyone. Because that team was probably 20 people. Yeah. But it would be so cool. Everybody wants Bully. Bully would be great. Yeah, like you're just a dude living out in the countryside and then the aliens arrive and that's your entire open-world adventure is to reclaim the Earth. That's what I want Red Dead 3 to be. And then you bully them. Big tripods walking around. Okay, well, so 85 million copies for Red Dead 2. But GTA 5, 230 million copies. It's just stupid. Like what? Yeah. 230 million copies? Of GTA 5. How many? That's like such a material percentage of all the humans on the planet. I know. I know, but Justin, surely you have one for yourself and two for your kids. Yeah, the kids need to have their own copies of GTA 5. Yeah, I tried to play GTA 5. It was on Game Pass recently and I was like all excited to go back through it again and I bounced off it after like three or four hours. That game has a slow on-ramp. You drive around and talk a lot. See, I always feel like when it slowed down for me, I'd switch to a different character and like it would get me going again. Like I loved that setup. It was really cool. Yeah. Starting or growing your own business can be intimidating and lonely at times. Your to-do list may feel endless with new tasks and lists can easily begin to overrun your life. 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I play all the Forzas, but the Forza Horizons are my favorites. It feels like Forza Horizon, and it feels like Forza Horizon 5. It's very pretty. It's like starting off lamented that it didn't feel very Japanese. That's exactly what I said. I think some people. Yeah, that's the question we were going to ask you. How Japanese is it? And it's like, I get it. Maybe they didn't want the sort of stereotypical, like, you know, you're the foreigner, everybody speaks with Japanese accents, and they didn't want that. The papers are clean on the radio. But it's like literally, you know, they. Like, I get to pick a GMC Jimmy at the start as one of the options. I'm like, I took the Silvia, of course. But, no, it's just, like, I don't know what I was expecting because the world is realistic, but it didn't sort of. And a lot of really, you know, a lot of games that are set in Japan obviously play up the sort of either feudal Japan factor or the super, like, hyper Shibuya Harajuku kind of vibe or Shinjuku Neon or something. And, like, this is. It just looked like going back to Australia, I gotta say. And everyone that talks to you has a British accent. And that's the other thing is that you don't meet this Japanese group that basically welcomes you to Japan and says, you know, don't mess with things. Don't climb into Punch the Monkey's cage this time. Here is the extra tourism tax you have to pay. Don't even look at the monkeys. Don't look them in the eye. Don't bring any food near them. Two dudes just got arrested, two foreigners, of course, got arrested for climbing down to Punch the Monkey to do, like, Instagrams or something or TikToks. No, but it's. then you start playing and obviously it feels really good. looks good the cars look beautiful um there's you know there's japanese radio stations so you get your j-pop and all of that and i'll see how it unfolds i don't know if i'm gonna do 280 hours again yeah because the last loop was all about i wanted all the cars and so it was like tune-in programming for me where i had to play it on the weekends and i was upset when i was on vacation and i missed a couple of cars um i don't know if i'm gonna do that again he said and then it was 300 yeah i'm getting i'm already getting a little bit stressed out so i'm i'm absolutely addicted to it i think it's excellent i i agree with all the feedback you said parrot doesn't feel i actually gave mark a little bit of a hard time on the show last week where he's like yeah when i'm flying down the roads like it feels like mexico it feels like australia but that's totally true right there's not enough kind of like strong japanese flavor in it and so love the game and i'm in complete alignment with luke's kind of like 10 out of 10 review score um tokyo is like a little bit of a different place than i've been in the past but i think it's a little bit of a different place than i've been in the past but i think it's a little bit of a different place than i've been a little bit disappointing yes it doesn't it just doesn't have a lot of personality um but i just like the moment to moment this is just like i think the soundtrack is really good and i think once you end an event it it pops up a thing that gives you like four recommended events to do next and you pick one and it routes you to it and so it's like i have a very i'm like kind of stressed out at work right now and so this game is like i just completely turn off my brain and just drive and i drive and i do the event and i have it set one notch above ease of above normal difficulty so above average is the difficulty and i've played a lot of forza so i never lose i just come in first place every single time and then i ride to the next event and then i come in first place and then i drive to the next event and come in first place so it's just like it's just like flow state the game for me and like and the music and sound does it say do you want to bring up the difficulty level and you go no yeah well so it was on normal it was on normal and i notched it up once and then i kept winning and it was like do you want to notch it up to like highly skilled or whatever's next i'm like no i just want to keep winning that's great great progression and so is that in a funny way it's like you're winning a lot yeah yeah are you sure you don't want to change this it does like this is such a tiny detail but it does matter to kind of that flow state that i'm talking about of like the song whatever song is playing like when you go into the menu and you start the next race like it just keeps playing so like the game just keeps it just it just like i just zone out i just it's been so nice and fun and it's just it's been such a great experience to like zone out and just not think for a while and just race it's just perfect i did this thing yesterday where my wife said hey we gotta go we gotta go get some groceries and i'm like yeah i'm just gonna finish this race and then the race ended and i just drove to the next one and immediately started because like it just feels so natural and like it's not like conquesting well maybe there's a little bit to that but like it just feels it's it's relaxing that said i remember when i did ratchet up the difficulty i actually got a backache from like being so like really straining to win uh to win the races i think one of the issues why it doesn't look that japanese by the way like at first sight is um when you go to the japanese countryside a lot of the houses have like blue shingle roofs that look like nothing on earth right like you know instantly in japan you're in japan when you sit in the car you cannot see any of that you see the sides of the buildings that usually look the same and so i i think that's one of the issues it's it's a car game set in japan not a game where you're flying through the air or exploring and getting close to things yeah it is a great gameplay loop that's the foliage looks like it's from somewhere else yeah it looks pretty japanese though yeah yeah it is hard to get out of when you're playing it because like you say you finish your race and then it recommends another one it's like okay one more all right let's just do another one it's hard to sort of get out of that loop yeah they need to i think that this is the last time for me that they can get away with i think that i think that the whole like music festival slash car festival that kind of horizon it feels very kind of like 2016 it does not feel 2026 anymore they've been doing it for two or three games now of like you know you're this celebrity and the and the and the you know that festival vibe is starting to feel a little old and some of the ui and ux is also starting to feel you know a little bit old and a little bit cheap so i want the game like you know the car racing like that like you know they've got it perfect and they have a winning formula on their hand and just keep it away forever but i'd like some of the wrapping around it to be kind of refreshed for the next one i think yeah it's it's funny because obviously japan is in the news a lot because of over tourism and you know there there's there's some friction between uh you know japanese nationals and visitors because and i could attest to that like last time i went it was so freaking packed it was uh it was before their prime minister pissed off china but like it was it was super crowded yeah and so i'm i'm half glad they didn't play up this sort of you know foreigners coming in and like taking pictures of everything and like conquering all the areas like i i think the the festival thing is is a safe um approach but i agree with you like it just it feels like there should be a new element it's it's feeling a little bit like all those games that did climb on a tower to conquer to unlock the map area right like that's what it's feeling like but if if all this sounds negative it's like it's just the moment you drive it just feels great yeah it's so much perfect it's it's a perfect racing game yeah it's wonderful and i think they just announced today six million copies already yeah and by the way just the game that's in game pass yeah that's great just in the uh the the one the one thing when you ratchet up the difficulty the the rubber banding is getting a little annoying and the games have always done that to a certain degree but like it feels worse now where it's like you can literally see another car just speed up next to you and you're like i what how did you do that yeah there's no they don't have to they don't have to break around corners yeah yeah the the new horizon festival like it's a version of the battle uh starts today pair so you have to decide whether you're going to be on that treadmill or not like i'm already like pre-stressed out about how i'm out of town for a week um for ijin live and other stuff and i'm like what about what am i gonna do about my cars come over bring your xbox you can plug it into my tv and sam we can't get into this game yet but i think you can share what game you're going to be playing and what you're going to be playing and what you're going to be playing and uh we just put up a preview of it that is uh glowing uh if you want to look at that preview i i recommend checking it out it talks about all of the games that mina is kind of drawing from and it talks about how that works in tandem and i think it's a really good uh indication of what you can expect from it and i can't wait to tell you more about it yeah we'll be able to talk about that on a future episode in the not too distant future justin you're playing you're playing an indie game yeah um quickly i want to talk about the indie game because i think it's a really good one i wanted to shout out sectory um it came out on steam last year but i'm playing it it came out on the nintendo switch too um it's awesome it's a geometry wars like and um uh it's just absolutely you know relentless and it fixes one of the big problems i had with geometry wars which is geometry wars took a little bit too long to kind of ramp up like if you lost a round it's like okay well 10 more minutes of sort of like this this gets you into it much more quickly and it does have the downside of that makes it more hardcore like the runs are kind of brutal and short but it's a top-down twin stick shooter it's got a bunch of different modes in it it's so clearly geometry wars like it even has that mode from geometry wars 2 where you go through the gates like you can't shoot but you go through the gates to kill things so time attack mode campaign mode um you know boss rush other stuff like that super rad it's made by um i don't know if it's literally made by one guy but like that the bullet point that i was talking about was i read is it's made by one of the guys that um worked at house mark and worked on superstar dust so just are you gonna play lego batman on your list you have to complete the list well i got about 11 other lego games i got to get through first so um yeah eventually i'll get to lego batman oh my yeah but that's coming out check it out that looks really good that i mean it looked it looked like it would be a geometry wars game yeah i mean i think it's a 2025 game but it would it's legitimately good enough to be like a game that's going to be a game that's going to be a like on my game of the year short list it's just it's that good cool yeah lego batman and then next week is 007 first light so much coming now it's already here anyway what i've been playing you know in this post bilaccio world by law by law every card game and parlor game has to have a roguelite video game of it uh i told you about the chess roguelite i was playing last week gom it's called gom bonanza which is a bad name but it's very good although with that one uh i have a little bit of an issue with its theme like we've talked about how bilaccio there's no story no lore nor nothing and yet it has kind of an uneasy feeling that it gives you yeah it's got that weird joker serial killer vibe yeah yeah but the gom bonanza you play like four levels in a row it's just chess there's no characters no nothing no dialogue no nothing it's just chess but then every five levels is a boss fight against this monster a named monster it's like what but it's the boss fight monster like a big horse or a big castle it's just no no not even that so the theme is a little bit weird there but i think it's very good anyway but the new one go ahead no the new one uh that i was really enjoying is black jacket which i could tell which is yeah black oh you know this one justin you played this yeah yeah well i've seen people talking about it online this is roguelite blackjack uh with you know the the card breaking rules of bilaccio where you do all sorts of crazy stuff, but it's also mixed with the deliberate narrative for regression of hades so you're okay you're playing blackjack in hell against uh you know some colorful characters you're having conversations while you play and you're slowly learning about what your relationships are to these people and why you're in hell and why this is all happening and it's it's really well done the acting is good one of the voices you know i looked it up i tried looking up it's an indie game i don't think they could afford him but one of the voices sounds exactly so much so i was convinced it was him as it sounds exactly like josh brolin doing thanos it sounds exactly like him but it's like there's no way right this is not josh brolin doing this but that's funny anyway anyway it's really good that looks great this is the one i'm enjoying like you know blackjack try to get as close to 21 without going over but you'll get like negative value cards so you can go if you're if you're currently at 25 you're still in the game because you can play a negative value and keep yourself in there you can play cards against your opponent sometimes it messes them up it's great yeah cards can burn other cards away it's called blackjacket this is the game i'm playing the most right now the one i'm most into looks neat i a narrative i wish there was more narrative gambling games you know like i i i don't know there's a weird connection to make but like remember how good uh poker night at the inventory was from telltale just like what i think they're just re-release it i i remember you got me so i remember when i was uh i don't i don't think i've ever told this but when i was covering n64 back in the 1800s um there was a company making a golden nugget licensed video game i think it was virgin or something and they came in they presented the design documents and some early footage to us and it was set in the casino but while you were gambling there was a murder and so then the game was the game would turn into like a narrative story about finding the murderer but you also need to gamble of course because why why stop right when there's dead people around for the nintendo 64 yeah and i remember it's it was called golden nugget 64 was the working title i hell yeah that concept never made it out i think the whole thing got canceled but like at the time we asked him like wait and the the casino lets you do this like it's got a violent murder in the middle of the casino they're like they're like yeah they haven't complained about it yet and we're like yes but but i love that exactly the kind of game i'm talking about yeah yeah no and like it never like it in the case of like poker night right like it didn't last like just this feeling of like i'm playing poker with glados and brock samson from you know venture brothers like eventually the lines start to repeat and you sort of see the you know you see behind the curtain but like it's a really magical like few hours in the beginning purchase new carpet from the home depot and get it installed for free right now shop the style choices and simple pricing of carpet from home decorators collection traffic master or life proof with pet proof technology and see for yourself why nobody beats our prices enjoy new carpet with free installation right now at the home depot offer valid october 15th through november 1st 2026 exclusions apply for licenses see homedepot.com license numbers this episode is brought to you by palm olive family time isn't just the big moments it's weeknight dinner sitting around the table everyone talking all at once so when the plates are empty and the sink is full use palm olive ultra palm olives most powerful formula removes up to 99.9 percent of grease leaving your dishes sparkling clean and the new convenient pump makes cleaning even easier so you can spend less time tackling dishes and more time together shop now at palmolive.com okay let's check in with the listeners hey listeners hello listeners remember you can always reach us at the email address games scoop at ign.com just like our friend charlie gadsden in san diego did says hello scoop it was great to hear justin's voice again last week after his four-week hiatus he may be pleasantly surprised to know the crew stepped up and only failed once at video game 20 questions during his absence what no because then that makes my stats work worse that doesn't even sound right i think we failed a lot more than that yeah on to my question last week i learned i learned this is charlie gadsden talking last week i learned forza horizon is a spin-off of the forza motorsport series what are some of your favorite spin-off franchises or games and when do you consider them better than the main entries some that quickly come to mind are red dead redemption is that a spin-off persona from shin megami tensei and minecraft story mode yeah and then he says while i'm here here's my video game 20 question submission this is not one i would pick he suggests tales of destiny 2 oh yeah that would have taken us four years i know what that is yeah yeah maybe i mean justin knows the tales games maybe he could have gotten it right i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know probably that's not one of the tales games that's fun fact i used to i know i know i know the trails games oh trails games trails fun fact i used to play destiny with listener charlie gadsden yeah is that true yeah were you uh no and then maybe not anymore and then fell off and now r.i.p destiny 2 yeah you can still play destiny 2 anyway spin-offs i got one yeah uh there's this little known game that spun off from a huge arcade hit and i don't know if you've ever heard of it and it's called super mario brothers and it's based on donkey kong oh yeah if you guys have ever heard it and i feel like super mario brothers is better than donkey kong even though mario brothers mario brothers is based on donkey kong yeah i see i see that's a spin-off okay you got me there sam claiborne i would have said persona like smt to persona they're very very different persona is absolutely my favorite yeah but nintendo is kind of the master of doing spin-offs everything dr mario paper mario ip slop doctor like even super paper mario is a spin-off of paper mario and super mario brothers yeah yeah yeah i feel like i feel like pokemon is a franchise that like over indexes on surprisingly good spin-offs that like match or sometimes exceed the mainline games like yeah well i mean pokopio recently but even pokemon mystery dungeon back in the day pokemon pinball was back in the day it's a strategy you want to remember that yeah yeah well the mystery dungeon do you mean something else is that a strategy game i can't remember the adm coliseum there's so many is a roguelike yeah they're turned ds2 screened uh turn-based oh yeah strategy and then there's uh link's crossbow training which vastly why does logan bring it up all the time does he actually like it he really likes it he really likes it it's not a troll no it's not true it is good it's just like is that limited is that what you want to do when you've got link on a horse it's to look right that's literally like a part of any open world game now you can do that yeah yeah i like it when indie companies get to do a spin-off like the the necrodancer people that got to do that i was i was gonna say i was gonna say yeah cadence cadence of hyrule yeah that was sick that was a really good one that was cool yeah there was a one that um i was gonna say there's one that people never talk about but sam and i actually played this together back in the day and that was an xbox live arcade game called castlevania harmony of despair yeah that was like the big multiplayer castlevania game where you cooperatively explored a level and the levels were huge and zoomed it would zoom out to keep everyone on screen even if they weren't together and then we could zoom back in and you had to take down a boss together it was actually really cool that's pretty neat yeah i remember that uh the sims is spun off of sim city yeah that's true that's crazy so that's pretty good there's so many like sim city's not around anymore right and simcopter right yes they try to do so much with sim yeah yeah there's so many fighting games that have spun off that have been terrible like the star wars masters of terras kasi and stuff like that but now some of those fighting games that are spin-offs of like are just i guess themed things are pretty good ones but it's always been the anime right like it's like are those the spin-offs are those the actual games yeah i guess those are just licensed titles that's true yeah kind of what what's the order of what came first there's a i mean i'm gonna i'm gonna butcher this history because i a i don't know it very well and b like it's not my thing but like the like dota and league of legends and that entire genre that entire billion dollar industry those were all um like mods and add-ons for like warcraft 3 and starcraft back in the day it's like you know users kind of modded um you played as one character that had special powers and defeated waves of enemies and then that eventually turned into you know dota spun out of that and became its own thing dawn of the end yeah there's a lot of stuff like that and then i mean smash brothers is is basically you take the original mario brothers the the two-player one you can draw a direct line to smash brothers to like this sort of platform fighter but remember the mortal kombat sub-zero spinoff that was funny the yeah yeah that's right the yeah the they included in the recent collection and i played it a little bit and it's very bad they're so bad like it's a lot of like i don't know if i can make this jump and i'm like the designers don't know either it's like you just gotta jump and maybe if you make it then they meant you to do that yeah it's really bad one of the easiest ways to make a spinoff of your series is just just throw the word tactics on the end yep they did do that totally i mean ogre tactics from ogre battle ogre battle was real-time strategy i miss those games metal slug metal slug now so tactics obviously final fantasy but even there was gears tactics yeah gears tactics was pretty good it was halo wars you know all racing is a spinoff from mario to sonic to everything everything the cart genre is a spinoff yeah mario kart that's probably the mario kart is probably the greatest spinoff of all time it's pretty good yeah it's pretty good pretty good um apex legends spot spot off of titanfall yeah good point yep that's true mario sports yeah all of them and another one another konami from the xbla days was hardcore uprising which is a great game from contra oh should have been sequels yeah yeah i don't know when they nice didn't sequelize that one a couple more to shout out gwent yep oh yeah that's like an export yeah yeah okay yeah it is like just literally spun it out yeah is gwent still popular the people still play gwent right i think at one time you know you got a standalone release and i think they're all popular i haven't played hearthstone in a long time i'm a marvel snap that's a snap guy this yeah these days yeah wow weird weird uh and then tiny tina's wonderlands okay it's pretty good i mean it's more it's just more very similar to a borderlands yeah yeah more more of the lands exactly that's pretty good okay extracurricular activities right after this tv i'm going to see the mandalorian sam has already seen it now boy saturday no no no spoilers but you know viewers listeners you've probably seen it's kind of getting clobbered in reviews uh but sam i think you i think you liked it right i let's let's just spoil it no no no i don't spoil it for me let's just do it no let's not spoil no no let's just do it let's just do it i uh uh so um logan i'm not looking at tom jorgensen uh gave it a five and uh he actually made a really cool comparison to the x files where there was you know the the kind of plot driven episodes that moved the overall story of the alien invasion along and then there's the monster of the week right uh this this is a monster of the week so like why why is it a movie and a lot of people are like well this makes for a bad you know piece of cinema it makes for an expensive disney plus show like those are all things to get mad about about this right but if you look at it as the monster of the week there's some good monsters and i mean like literal monsters in this it is a monster movie about monsters and that's what i liked about it the back half of the movie is a jim henson movie with like puppets and stop motion and like all this stuff that should not be in a movie these days and then it is just it works and it's all really fun to watch so i think i'm gonna like it yeah i i hope hopefully i've got my expectations in check and like i said it's just i can enjoy it as a long episode of the mandalorian that's i think when when you get sort of this negative critical reaction then you go in you're probably gonna like it better just because you're ready for a disaster to me like when i when i saw the trailers i'm like i'm hooked on the the star wars machinery right like honestly anything with an ad ad in it yeah i'm i'm already interested i love the two huts i'm already i'm already into that it's just the movie why are we i mean i'm impressed right now i'm impressed that they could speak english the entire time those little scenes released but uh no dude no it's really kind of bad how they switch to the english like it's great when hutty's for a little while okay then you're like why did we do this it's almost like a a little um you know switch up for convenience but it's really noticeable like that's how i handle is it like hunt for red october where it's like uh yeah exactly what are you doing here come on about like what what was i most worried about going into this movie it's like the huts like phantom menace you know i'm not a fan of this the the new hope uh special edition oh yeah it's so bad so bad right it's just it's so bad and like am i gonna see this whole movie first of all uh and then also there's a character voiced by jeremy allen white right that we know about uh that was that was what i expected to be the worst part of the movie it might be the best part of the movie okay and i'm not saying that the rest of the movie is terrible it's legit good like the hut stuff is gross and interesting and fun it's cool all right well i'm gonna see it and i'm just i'm interested but i'm i was watching the trailer i was worried this was gonna be like han solo where it's like i don't think han solo is a bad movie at all but it's sort of like it existing or not existing doesn't matter to the canon sometimes that's cool i actually think the monster of the week episodes in x files are way better than the alien invasion stuff the the sort of conspiracy stuff yeah yeah great you want to hear where the kessel run came from it's an off off it's a line they just tossed off and now do you want to see the whole backstory you're by yourself we'll call you han solo that was so bad i'm really excited for java fit so right yeah yeah so this is the stop motion stuff like it's actual you know miniatures stop motion it's crazy um so uh the coming out of this movie the people that saw it at ign were asked to kind of take a look you know for the future we're talking about like how do we rank this with the star wars movies you know we'll probably put this in a piece about where we put it and you know the the take because the movie got a really low score from the person who reviewed it uh was that you know this would be placed pretty low on a list right but like i looked at our list after that and i'm like i i i just i saw the prequel trilogy it's like i'm there that they're funny and ironic now and that like phantom menace is like really nostalgic to me those movies are awful they're awful awful movies i think you go to the theater to sit through one it's bad and this is easy to sit through okay no you're right about that because i i have to watch those people movies all the time now because kingo loves them we were just watching attack of the clones this week like yeah and i i don't hate the movies but they're really bad but so anyway that's enough talk about star wars i also watched send help okay oh yeah that's this i saw it streaming sam raimi movie it's on it's streaming now and i can't decide if i liked it or not okay oh it's it's it's i like the sam raimi-ness of it it's so you know the premise this is a two people stranded on a desert island they knew each other going into this they she worked for him and he's a and he passed her over for a promotion that she deserved for a much less qualified dude it's like that's their relationship on the island and yes she was screwed over and deserved that promotion but she's also super unlikable and just obnoxious that's what it seemed like she has terrible hygiene it's like so none of these neither of these people are likable so i don't know you kind of just watch these people make their way on this island and some gross stuff happens and then at the end i was just like well okay yeah all right but isn't that how beef is it's like people you don't like uh getting into it yeah i guess it has some similarities to that there's some good like gross sam raimi stuff but there's also i think the characters are likable in beef i didn't see the second season i haven't seen the second season either yeah yeah i think i think you get to like them more as they explore their beef i will say i didn't i was always you know i wasn't your big raimi fan though no yeah i i really like drag me to hell that is i think is a very good movie this is not on the level of driving hell but i you know i was engaged i was i wasn't bored and i wasn't ever really sure what was going to happen next so i just so it's a it's a okay i'll watch it when my wife is on a business trip it's gross if it's if she was so mad at the boys yeah she doesn't she doesn't want to see that no all right that brings us to video game 20 questions now first i have an email here i'd like to share it's a very nice email and i'll explain something here this comes from nathan evans who says dearest omega cops i just wanted to take a moment to thank you all for the joy you've brought me over the last several years i've been a devoted listener for the last seven years and i know mark thinks this is weird but i have gone back and listened to most of your back catalog from before i discovered you it's actually justin that thinks that's the way you do it yeah mark's catching strays for something i said nathan says what began as a way to pass the time on a very long commute during a busy and difficult time in my life has become one of my favorite weekly rituals game scoop is my favorite thing about friday think about that you guys you guys compete with the end of the work week and win at least for me i am an old and i've been playing video games obsessively since my childhood in the early 80s gaming has become something i have shared with my five children and i have special memories gaming with each of them my youngest son max watches game scoop with me every friday what's up max has been nudging me to send this email for several months he adores older games loves to collect classic consoles over the years i have thought about several suggestions for video game 20 questions but in my heart i knew that there was only one game that would be the perfect submission for me beautiful joe and then i did a quick search today and you already did that one in 2019 right before i started listening so did you guys did you guys know that it is getting pretty hard to find a game that feels fair that you haven't already used in video game 20 questions so this one may be too hard but i'll throw it in the ring anyway because i have such fond memories of it and yes i i wanted to share the email it's a very nice email but his game was gun valkyrie oh xbox okay so i don't even know yeah i don't know i played it but i would have never guessed it but he says either way i just wanted to say thank you for all the fun happiness you bring me each week means the world to me and max we are proud members of scoop nation we are lucky to have you both nathan and max awesome so that moves us on to our actual pick this week which comes from ethan but you don't get any backstory about ethan that's it so okay let the questioning begin at least you're going to be able to answer the question that you're going to be able to answer we got a story where's ethan from unclear that doesn't count as a question no no uh okay did this game come out in the 70s 80s or 90s no um a newfangled game relatively is this game on current uh played hardware no no is it an exclusive to a platform at launch yes oh okay okay okay was it exclusive to a sony platform no so we're talking about gamecube xbox or crazy handhelds phones and all that stuff 70s 80s or 90s so 2000s not current hardware is this game on a nintendo platform there's a pretty big gap between 2000 and current hardware yep that that's five questions and yes it is on a nintendo platform okay okay so it's um is it on a is it on nintendo hardware that came in purple yes okay that could be gameboy advance and gamecube yeah there's no purple wii i'm gonna assume that it is a gamecube game i forgot about the purple gba i had the glacier blue one um uh okay was this game developed or published by nintendo yes okay um is this yeah i was thinking battalion wars 2 that's hilarious um is this a uh is this game series uh still in active development today that we know of announced no no so that could still be battalion wars because it is not officially advanced wars it was announced as an advanced wars game yeah yeah it was um battalion wars would also have been a valid shout out during our spinoffs segment yeah it's actually a good game nobody played but so it's excitebots yeah excite truck what did you say sam do you play as a human yes developed or published by nintendo on the gamecube probably play as a human not no sequels in development yeah there's not a lot i mean that is literally well it also rules out excite truck and excite bots and all of that because they weren't on the gamecube and no no human in there what are you thinking about yeah i'm i i like that we're stuck on battalion wars now yeah i am kind of stuck on battalion wars yeah but there's also as a human in battalion wars who are you in battalion there's also star wars rogue leader gamecube was a big game obviously that's not developing nintendo though by that's factor five but did they publish it they did publish yeah did they publish eternal darkness i was just gonna say did did nintendo publish yeah but didn't you say published and developed no i said or or or okay yeah because that's a silicon knights game that's eternal darkness that's a good one um is this a military game no that is 10 no battalion wars would you say this game was geared at adults um no okay that rules out eternal internal darkness yeah definitely definitely not eternal darkness that was horror okay published and developed what about like uh what about like a sports game like well there was that well like there was a 1080 on the gamecube 1080 snowboarding is not an active development wave race um wave wave race blue storm is the other one you play as a human in that both of them yeah what was the 1080 1080 whatever it's called on the gamecube i can't remember the name of it now it's 1080p snowboarding freestyle a4 adp uh what was the sequel was it us no no it was some storm shit what was it um avalanche no blue storm avalanche that's it yeah 1080 1080 um avalanche is this a sports game no oh for christ's sake i still thought we were on to something there yeah um okay let me go through the slate of gamecube we don't know if it's gamecube by the way we just know it's purple is this a gamecube game yes we know it's a gamecube game correction you remember i think it was made by sega but i always liked beach spikers on the gamecube okay underrated volleyball game do you um it's not chibi robo because you're a robot you're a robo that's a bandai game right um is it what about chibi robo yeah it's not nintendo published it didn't they yeah but they didn't why is there amoeba for it they didn't make it oh there's an amoeba for damon freaking yacht club side question out of out of game question would you consider a racing game a sports game well it depends because i think uh because wave race like f1 i would say yes but wave wave race is a sports game yeah okay but i i guess what i was thinking about was f0 gx yeah that's sega that's amusement vision made that but it could also be a super smash brothers melee because there is no sequel announced oh well no that's true that's true um there's also custom robo do you guys remember that no oh man um is this a fighting or racing game no what if it's animal crossing animal crossing does not bro yeah bro i got it it's metroid prime there's not a sequel there's not an announced sequel in development don't you think that's geared at adults oh i don't know yeah okay all right i'm gonna ask is it a first person shooter or first person adventure game okay one of the two no no that's 15 but okay i mean you what you just know you know who made this game right yeah okay well published okay that's why that's okay i see your line of thinking yeah retro is still gotcha yeah but he just gave away that it's developed by nintendo that's pretty good um well there's wind waker can it not be animal crossing there's there's wind waker we don't know that there is not a human yeah link is a link is an elf he's a hylian yeah you're right yeah that's even more accurate or you're definitely right sam it could be animal crossing that is that a human yeah you're a human that's and then everyone else ragdoll everyone's an animal he's a villager yeah yeah but maybe it is maybe it is all there is this set in the mario or zelda universes yes that's not an early one we should that's not but it's got to be no but it's got to be mario because yeah because you're a hylian you're not human but maybe damon made a mistake here too we don't he would correct himself because he's a man of honor i like to think that if damon makes a mistake he just pivots to a whole new game so i think of a game that aligns with all the answers so far yeah that's so good uh is it i mean if it's mario sunshine that could be possible hold on hold on how many questions do we have damon we got to be smart three questions and a guess we know with relative confidence that it's a mario universe game what about what about like luigi's mansion there that's a good one good one yeah there's mario super mario sunshine we know it's not it's not any of the sports spinoffs and it's not cart because those are racing games obviously could be could technically be we could ask was there a paper mario i'm trying to remember there was we could we could ask if it's a spinoff do you think luigi's mansion counts as a spinoff or is it just its own thing yeah that's a spinoff but i don't know what damon thinks well you're kind of leading him now too did you bust ghosts in this game yes you do is it luigi's mansion the first one that's good good yeah yeah oh man but there probably is a luigi's mansion in the works we just don't know yeah that's why we asked yeah i know known that was one of logan's predictions for the next i will again state for the record oh really two luigi's mansion three has finally sold millions and is doing well but there's still millions who have not played luigi's mansion three and if you tried two and you didn't love it three is so freaking good it is incredible game yeah i'm glad it's better some of the best animations on any nintendo platform i was gonna bring it up so i bought the mario galaxy movie on tuesday when it was available on digital yeah i've already watched it twice at home and i think about what nintendo should do next with its animation i think a luigi's mansion movie could be awesome it's bad it's a it's the perfect sort of self-contained story especially if they go down the route like just if you know for people who haven't played three the mansion has all these different biomes in it because it's complete nonsense of course right so there's literally a room where you open the door and it's haunted and it's filled with it's filled with sand and you have a vacuum cleaner it's so good yeah so good it's got all the guigi stuff yeah plus great game but you can have mario on the rescue mission right yeah Yeah, you can have that, too. Yeah. But this game, the first Luigi's Mansion, I never played. I think at the time, a lot of us were disappointed that we weren't getting a new Mario platformer yet. It's super compact. This is like what was here for launch at GameCube. And I was like, eh, I don't know about that. Well, because you also wanted something that lasted you like 20 to 30 hours. And it's a under 10-hour campaign on this one. It is a really good game. And just as a tech demo for the GameCube, it excels. Like the lighting system, you know, they faked a lot of stuff. But it just looks fantastic. And then the physics model around vacuuming and all of that. It is a fun game. I think we gave it a 7, which is completely fair. The more discerning gamers got Monkey Ball as their launch game. I would say Monkey Ball is actually the better of the two. And both really super cool action games centered around like a MacGuffin, like something that feels good. Like tilting over the landscape and here it's the vacuuming stuff. You should probably go back and play this. Is it on Nintendo Switch Online? Was Monkey Ball really a launch game? Yeah. Well, no. 2 got remade and came out. So I'm sure you'll get it soon. I think I'm good. I'll just. Luigi's Mansion 3 is very good. I can stick with that one. Luigi's Mansion 3 does everything the first one did. Yeah. And so, fair. You don't have to go back. But the music is also awesome. The whole. It's so good. And Mario. Mario. All that stuff is good. Mario. Well, nicely job. Thank you for the suggestion, Ethan. Viewers, listeners, if you have your own suggestions for Video Game 20 questions, email them to me at the email address, gamescoop.igin.com. Pear, IGN Live is right around the corner now. Yes, I will be there. I'm excited. Pear will be there. Sam will be there. Justin will be there. I'll be there. Most of us will be there. It's going to be so fun. It's June 6th and 7th. Here in downtown LA. Live Game Scoop. Live NVC. Get your hands on unreleased games. Check out some presentations of unreleased games. It's really, really good. Sam and I are curating a little museum corner. Yeah. There's that too. For like rare items. Yeah. It'll be fun. And we'll hang out. We'll hang out there. And if you ask us a question, we'll talk to you for 30 minutes about the Apple Pippin. We have an Apple Pippin. Well, actually, until they're like. Until they want to go walk away. Yeah, yeah. You guys will. You will walk away because we will not. We will not stop talking about it. Anyway. We will stop. Go to live.iGen.com and use the code SCOOP for a free ticket. There you go. It doesn't get any cheaper than that. Also, over at Humble Bundle, our friends, they have a Humble Indie Icons Showcase, which is live now, celebrating 15 years of Humble Bundle. It's got a bundle of our favorite indie games. It's got Bloodstained, Superhot, Celeste, The Witness. That's one of Justin's favorite games of all time. And more. It's a $200 value, but you pay what you want. Go to Humble Bundle. Humble Bundle.com and check it out. And that's all the scoops that we have for you this week. Thank you, Per. Thank you. Thank you, Sam. Thank you, Justin. I am off to a galaxy far, far away. My name is Damon. This is iGen Game Scoop, and we're out. Damon, he wants to eat his own poop. Well, don't do that. It saves you money. Then they want to lick your face. It saves you money. Exactly. It's like the whole dog is smelly. No, we're usually too fast for him. He's like pooping. He spins around. We're like, nope. He's a single-linked dog centipede. Just let him be. I look really short, Jobert. Look at how giant Damon is. Yeah, it's the Force perspective. This is what we're going to shoot the Hobbits and Gandalf at this desk. I'm trying to help you. Fool of a dog. Throw yourself in next time and rid us of your stupidity. I probably shouldn't make this the after-credits scene. No, let's not do this after-credits scene. Sorry. Yeah, none of this can be in the show. We should talk about something else. So I walked by Jobert's station, and it was showing this from a side view, the footage, and I thought it was a video game. Yeah. Yeah. Dog's Trials. Should we not use this because we're breaking embargo, or should we not use this because we're a failure? - New and exclusive holiday decor just launched online at the Home Depot. Check out the viral Grand Duchess collection with smart holiday lights you can control from your phone. Easily customize the twinkle across trees, wreaths, and garlands to match your holiday vibe. Create stunning light effects, then switch it up with the tap of your fingers. Even the man in red will be impressed. Shop the holiday decor you want online only at homedepot.com. Want to be the one who's always in the know about the game, the scores, the plays? 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