(upbeat music) - What's up everybody? Welcome to IGN Game Scoop, I'm your host. - Damon Hatfield, I'm joined here in studio by Nick Lemone. - I'm back, baby. - And we are also joined by Sam Clayborn. - Hey, it's so good to be here on a lovely June afternoon. - And Justin Davis. - Scoop. - Who is not mirrored this week. I don't know how he didn't notice this. - No, that happened. - Last week, he was mirrored the whole time and like the IGN sign was backwards, but I never noticed it. - Until the comments pointed out. - It said, it said NGI the whole time. - Yes, it did. - And when he had the go-t, that was the adjustment. - All the comments were very bad. - Mirrored Justin. - I don't know how it happened, and I don't know how he never noticed it. - That's actually how his room normally works. We actually just reversed that. - We reversed that. - For the sake of everyone watching. - Yeah, interesting. - Yeah, you're normally getting mirrored to mention Justin and then we on Mirrored for the show. - Well, we've got a great show for you this week who got what seems to be the final proof that GTA VI will arrive later this year. We'll share what games we've been playing and Sam, someone out there needs some live pinball. Let's help that they're reaching out to you for it. But first, just less than two weeks ago now, Xbox held its showcase. Summerco's showcase and everyone seemed pretty happy with it. - It was a pretty good one. - It was a pretty good show. Everyone seemed pretty happy about it. It was like, okay, we got new leadership in there. Maybe good times are ahead for Xbox. - Yeah, exclusives are back. - Yeah, yeah. - Baby. - Since then, since in the less than two weeks since then, let's see here. The head of Xbox games studios departed, I've been growing concern over layoffs in possible studio shutdowns. Xbox has reportedly shut down South of midnight developer compulsion games, not confirmed, but reportedly, also Ninja Theory and Double Fine are also reportedly under threat of closure. Microsoft's CEO says there's more monetization of Xbox games happening on YouTube than at Microsoft. And now finally, Xbox is reportedly speeding up new Elder Scrolls fallout in Halo games. As Microsoft leaves spinning off the Xbox business on the table. They actually did the "Can You Work Harder" Homer Simpson thing then with the Elder Scrolls. Can you just put out the game? - Well, that's what we've been saying for years. - It's so weird to like, I mean, maybe they're, I mean, clearly, they listened to Game Scoop, right? Because we prescribed that fix. - I mean, it's like when I go on the record say, none of those other fixes were ours. So that was clearly a mix and match of other bad ideas for bad podcasts. And one great idea from a great podcast. It's kind of an open secret that Satya Nadella is big Tony style, but. (laughing) - What, I don't know, what's going on? What's, how do they, - It's pretty diabolical. - How do they do themselves out of this one? And why, since they knew all this bad news was coming, why didn't they get all that out ahead of their showcase? - Then it'd be a gloomy doom on their showcase. - Well, but at least like, you could like start, you know say, okay, you know, we've made some tough decisions to try and course corrects here. And now here's what our future looks like. And then, you know, - There is a mix of the, yeah, the corporate thing to do is you give terrible news, you know, three weeks before your showcase. And then at your showcase, you're sort of like, okay, new era, new, now let the hype go. But I think, I think Asha Sharma just didn't have time to like, you know, she's - It just came up, too. I mean, I think like, look, she came in as the new CEO of Xbox and said, Elder Scrolls and Fallout and Halo are three of the biggest video game franchises on the planet. - And that's not according to Mark Medina. - That's just fantastic. - Yeah. - And like, you know, and then they don't make them. They don't make them and release them. Once every 10 or 15 years, like it's completely new. - No, I was thinking about it. - I was thinking about it. - Yeah. - I know, and Elder Scrolls online. So, which always show up with that Bethesda logo, right? - Yeah. - And their conference is, it was, oh! And then everybody was boo! - I mean, I'm sure those games have gigantic audiences, but at the end of the day, I'm like, - Sure, they're fine. - Let's just remove those from the showcase at this time. Because the people who are already interested in those games are already up to date with everything happening to them. Otherwise, I'm like, you just make yourself look weaker as a real little, it's like, oh, here's not a real old, it's not a real old, that's mean. But, you know what I mean? It's not the single layer. - It's not Elder Scrolls 6. - It's not the same with Fallout. It's like, I don't want another Fallout 76 expansion. Just give me a new Fallout. - Well, what are you master of Fallout? - Exactly that. Yeah, so remasters find as stopgaps. And then also, just the idea of like, you have a franchise, like Fallout Shelter was really cool. Like, what are a bunch of like little, like do the Nintendo thing? You know, Mario is not just in mainline Mario games. Just find Mario and so many different types of games. Like, use the franchises to cool stuff. Give it to indie studios. Give it to other people to do Fallout. And let me just add to that, the thing that really, really got me going this week is that there hasn't been a Starcraft game in what, 15 years, something like that. And it's like Microsoft owns Starcraft. - Well, no, they don't Blizzard. - Is it? They could just put out a Starcraft game. - Starcraft is still coming, I guess. I heard that. - It doesn't do that. Nintendo is really, they're probably the best in the industry. Like, having extensions of their big franchises and their big IP that doesn't sheepen it. Of like, 'cause I understand the argument of like, you want Elder Scrolls in a Fallout to be like an event. Like, this is the game and this is the moment in time. But it's like, you can do both. Like, you can have Fallout Shelter and these re, you know, these remasters and these other experiences. And then have, you know, a new mainline game coming out every four or five years. Like, these droughts of like, we're just not gonna see Fallout or Elder Scrolls. Like, so really, like, you know, so for as much as this is like bad news for, you know, a developer like Ninja Theory. Potentially, I mean, look, it's all rumor. Like, rumor is double fine. Might be instant trouble. Rumor is Ninja Theory might be in some trouble. Like, it's probably good news for like Obsidian. It's like, hey Obsidian, like your job now is to make, you know, off-cycle Fallout and Elder Scrolls games whenever Bethesda's not making them probably. - Yeah, get that of that too, Adam. - That was so weird. - Give me Fallout. - Kind of, yeah, no more without too. - Yeah, I mean, just back to the, the Hellblade thing. Like, that is just so cruel and weird to include that. And the, I mean, we don't know what's gonna happen with Ninja Theory, but like, if that's true, but the silver lining, if there is any, is that from what we understand from the reporting, there's a chance that like, they will be not just all fired as Microsoft employees, but like, given a chance to shop around their games or something. Like, it's all interesting. But like, think of the talent at these studios. They're not, I mean, I make fun of this game and some recent double-fine games and everything, but like, there's still talented studios that maybe could have been working on a really fun, Bethesda, IP. - But, I mean, that's the thing, right? It's like, these boutique games, it's like Xboxes. That's a, like, I really like to play them. You know, we really like to talk about them on this show, many Game Scoop fans or fans of them, but like, they're not, like, that's a, that's a luxury that like, when you're in third place, it's kind of a distant third place. It's like, you gotta just, like, they're not in a position, they need to just be playing the hits. Like, that's kind of it for Xbox for like a while. - Yeah, I always, when you were saying Nintendo was really good at this, just kind of getting their IP everywhere and making small games. I, there was a time when Sega got really good at that. And they were like a company where it's like, you know, they had so much just thought put into their universes and their characters and their things and they were just everywhere. They're very good at branding and they're all over. And Dreamcast was kind of interesting 'cause they really loaded the Dreamcast with as many games as possible and famously really good games. It still didn't work for the Dreamcast and I don't know why, but they didn't have a game. I mean, people would say Sonic Adventure is this game, but they really didn't have a game that could compete with the most popular games of that time, which became Grand Theft Auto 3 by the end of the Dreamcast. - Yeah, you know what I realized? This week, you know, Xbox, they haven't been able to figure out how to sell consoles for a long time now. But Xbox has been in the hardware business now for longer than Sega was. - Yeah, that's interesting, yeah. It's crazy. - Yeah, unless you count, you know, 1940s coin-operated machines. - I don't, we do not. - They ain't Hawaii. - So yeah, I mean, it's sad. I don't know, like there's two, there's the duality of the game's group panelist of like there's, you know, the industry commentator element of us where it's like, yeah, you know, like Xbox, I gotta figure their stuff out. Like they're spending too much money, they have too many employees. And there's kind of like, you know, double finds made some of my favorite games ever, right? Like often what I like is the smaller stuff and the stuff that takes risks. But yeah, that's risks are luxury, right? That like they can't afford it. - I also think though it's a little bit unfair to like armchair quarterback of like, oh, well, they should have just made, you know, not killing or whatever. But when in reality, a lot of these studios is jobs is, you know, they get acquired as part of Microsoft portfolio and they get explicitly told or not, depending on who they are, don't worry about making a gigantic triple A game. Give me something that's gonna win awards and whatnot. - Or the one keeps subscribers to Game Pass. - Yeah, it adds, you know, different, it broadens the portfolio in a way that makes people feel like they're getting a good deal and getting a wide variety of experiences of Game Pass. So it's hard to fault people like double fine for not giving us a psycho knots three. When in reality, they've not been told to. And maybe that's just, you know, the inherent nature and struggle of corporate ownership, you know, they kind of detail this a little in their psych odyssey, gigantic video documentary. - Don't you think they were, like, you're talking about like if they put out think games at a clip that have some quality then that's useful. But I feel like double fine was completely slowed by the acquisition. And there was a time in which double fine was putting out five really interesting little games each year back in like the costume quest.
and stocking and then put a little legend alongside of it. Like it was just, it was at a, this, this different clip. And that seemed to go away. - I mean, there was the quote, and all of this, all of this is off the record, right, like none of it. Like there was the quote of like, these Xbox studios are being punished for an executive mandate from five years ago, right? Of like, you know, Game Pass, where all about Game Pass now, your game doesn't need to sell 10 million copies. It just needs to be intriguing and engaging and then, you know, we're gonna release a good Game Pass game. Every month and keep people subscribed. And so that's where things like, you know, penitent and avowed and, you know, kiln. And like, that's where all of these games came from, right? And now, but now it's like that's not seen as commercially viable. And so they're just kind of, you know, these studios are stuck in kind of like a weird spot. - It makes you really bummed that they got gobbled up to begin with, right? Because like, you know, the advantage is to having that cushion of a large corporate owner and people getting really behind you. It's like all exciting, there's a payout. All that stuff happens, but like, you know, in the end, this is how so many different creative teams get crushed is that they go for this and they kind of spin the wheel, right? 'Cause sometimes it works out. I mean, Rare has been part of Xbox making games for a long time. I like the games they necessarily make. The game they make. - See the game. - Yeah. - But, you know, they're there and they're making stuff after all these years. They didn't get spun out or trashed. - Yeah. - So, layoffs. - And even Rare had ever wild canceled. - Yeah, true. - I mean, that's true. - Layoffs are expected next month. There's reporting from Bloomberg and Jason Schryer. The word he uses is blood bath. So it doesn't sound like next month will be particularly great for Xbox either. But, these three studios that we're talking about, Compulsion, Ninja Theory and Double Fine, I mean, I actually kind of, I can see where Microsoft would be coming from. 'Cause let me share some data with you. Microsoft acquired Compulsion in 2018. It released, we happy few that year. We gave it a 7.3, it has a 63 on Open Critic. It did not, or Compulsion did not release anything else until Southampton night last year. And then Ninja Theory was also acquired in 2018. Since then, it released the MOBA Bleeding Edge in 2020. Support for that was ended nine months later. And then it released Hellblade 2 in 2024. That's it. They've announced it in New York, but who knows what's gonna happen to that. And then Double Fine was acquired in 2019. Since then, it has really second thoughts to keep her in kiln. So yeah, these studios have not been very productive under Microsoft and they're not making hits. Although, I think second thoughts to actually Double Fine's best-selling game. - Yeah, I mean, it is, you think about a game like Southampton night, and I still, it's in my backlog. Like, it's definitely a Justin game. I wanna play it, I'm confident, I'll like it. The IGN reviewer loved it. I mean, everybody loved it, right? So like, it's a real shame. I mean, it's very sad. Like, it's, you made it. You did, you made a great game. You made a really great piece of art, but it didn't connect with people commercially, right? And it took a really long time, like, I don't know if it was behind schedule, but like, probably, presumably, right? And so, then you end up in danger as a result of that. Like, it's very sad. - It also just, I lament the fact that you brought up a, you know, Obsidian earlier. And, you know, I just think that this new direction that Microsoft is heading in, and Xbox is heading in, is going to pave the way for just things that are, what is commercially viable, as opposed to, you know, it's gonna be sad if we don't get a pen-timate. Like, it's something that evokes the same kind of feeling that I don't think, you know, the astronomical cost of something like pen-timate, despite looking like, you know, a small quirky indie game, it takes a lot to have all of these different things that make that game uniquely it. And it's just the shame that we're not really gonna be able to see, I assume, things like this in the near future coming from Xbox, 'cause this is a one-of-a-kind experience. - That's like, you're really getting at my, Damon was getting at this earlier, and you kind of mentioned this today, brings me back to like, I want to talk about Xbox, the way we're talking about them, and it's fun. But really, I just want to play really good video games, and I want more people to make them, and I want those people to be employed so they can make good video games. And the thing that really disappoints me about all this is that I actually thought it was a good idea when Microsoft was like, let's give these companies that everybody likes a lifeline. And they're gonna make some games under us now, and then it kind of, that's exciting, 'cause then it gets a market it in their big E3 replacement conferences, we talk about all the games as Xbox games. That's all fun, like it's just fun to think about it that way. And then the games come out, and they're good or bad, or whatever, but there's just lots of games. And by almost the definition of this down sizing process, we're just gonna fewer of these good games, a fewer creative teams, and fewer jobs. And it's just like, what was the point? Could we have solved this in another way by managing it better this whole time? It seems like it. - Well, it's hard to, they need game pass to keep growing. I mean, it's a bet on game pass that has not penned out the way that they wanted it to. And so they need to break through from this hard court, like if you listen to game scoop, you're a pretty hard court gamer. And like they need game pass to reach a very mass market mainstream audience, and that's the exact opposite. Like, you know, who subscribes to game pass for pen-tom-it? - Right. - Like they already have every single one of those customers. So that it's-- - And we saw the TV companies all do this, right? 'Cause Netflix puts so much money, the Amazon, puts so much money in developing television. Now, all of my friends that worked on those television shows don't have jobs. Because that money went away, the creativity went away, the teams went away. And they've copied the Netflix strategy. That's what Xbox strategy was, right? It's still like, get as much content as you can to have field as many people that you have bigger subscriber bases. And like, boy, it didn't work for either of them. Now, for Netflix, it was different though, right? Because for Netflix, it was like all of a sudden there was Disney, and you know, until a lesser extent, Hulu, and all these things that ate into it. And Amazon came out swinging an apple. So it's like, that didn't happen with Xbox. I think Xbox kind of has an unparalleled subscription service. But it's just niche. And so then you have, then it doesn't matter if you made a good product or not. The only thing that matters is did your product grow the subscriber base? Right, that's the kind of economic incentive. And so good TV show, you know, layoffs, bad TV show, layoffs, like good game layoffs, bad game layoffs. Like it's bleak, right? It's very, you know, it does bump me out. It's wild that they're like, apparently selling off the Xbox businesses on the table, putting their ports. I don't know. I don't want to see Xbox like under-embracer. Sega, you interested? Like, embrace or like, yeah, that's not what you would want. Yeah, who could buy them or? Amazon, you know, these companies, Netflix, these companies that have streaming platform, is that's what would make sense. Because there's this existence streaming service, and then, you know, they would be able to, they want to get into gaming. Like we were always hearing about, you know, Amazon and Netflix's efforts to try to build up their streaming games, surprising what they have on us. I see that Amazon logo every time I boot up, 007 first, like, yeah, yeah. Oh, also just real quick, we happy few. That was the game we were trying to come up with a watching the Xbox conference, Damon. Yeah, yeah. We were watching it. I was like, there's a game, and then it has these. Yeah, that's like the devil's, the devil's deal. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, we were like, this is a new, we happy few game. I mean, giving them something like a, you know, the compulsion games feels perfectly aligned with something, in my opinion, with like an sim, like, you know, dishonored like or something like that. Especially, you know, what happened to Arcane? Like, come on, like guys, you have all the good studios, you made them go away. It's so, it's so sad. Yeah, Redfall. Redfall. Yeah, I mean, even interesting, your caliber of game doesn't matter if you have just one flop, right? I think it's interesting that there's like, trending genres right now, like, extraction shooters, our creators is the most popular one, but before that, it was Eskip and Tara. It's like, Call of Duty is aiming at that. Like they, they want to do an extraction, they have this one, like they're doing all that. But like, you would think Xbox would be like, you know, two years ago, and like, you know, it'd be really interesting if we used one of our franchises to make an amazing extraction shooter in two years. That's this kind of like nimbleness that'd be really interesting with so many studios around. And then that's where your subscribers come from, right? But it's just, they're not thinking that way. Like, how many indie games can we get on this platform? Games take too long to make. And exactly that too. For Western developers. Well, yeah, and you know, and I, we don't need to go into the, the depths of this argument, argument to the space. But, you know, a lot of developers came out after last two weeks and said like, hey, we're using AI assets. This is how we're using them. And everybody's like, ooh, which is, I'm not commenting on that. I think it's interesting that they're saying it now. And I just think that that's, it's interesting that they're just like, this is work. This is how we have to make games now. And they like get the PR out before it leaks or whatever and they get mad at it. Like, that is an interesting topic that's happening right now. And I'm looking forward to watching that space and covering it. Yeah. I don't know. The task of like turning things around for Xbox hardware sales, it just seems like such an uphill battle. I have to assume there have been actual conversations. Satya, Nadella, and Anastasharma discussing, shutting it all down and selling off the franchises. I mean, that has at least, that has at least have been discussed behind closed doors at this point. Yep, I would imagine so. But the only did just be,
It's been $70 billion to buy Activision, so we would see him pretty crazy. We'll see how things shape up, hopefully next month, I don't know, if there are layoffs, hopefully, don't like the term "blood" bath, but. No, I know. They only need to sell a couple hundred million copies of Windows to cover that. Okay, good. Good, good, good. Mission 1, finished. Well, a little bit more exciting news, we've got the box art for Grant that thought of 6 today. Yeah. And we got some announcement. Pre-orders open up one week from today. Nick, you did a whole little GCFM show on that this morning. Yeah. This is, surely this is a confirmation, nobody should be expecting another delay, I don't think. November 19th. I have delayed before after opening pre-orders that happened with our Red Dead Redemption 2, but I think at this point, there's that IGN story with Strauss Zelnick from after Take 2 earnings call with IGN where he's basically reassuring, like, no, no, no, it is coming, don't worry about it, it's all good. And I am inclined to believe him. I think this is timed very specifically, this is all marketing content that's been planned. I'm sure years in advance and it's like, all right, we're hitting all of our tent poles and it's all working out nicely. At this point, like, you know, I know part of my job here at IGN Disomics, and especially as the GCFM guy is to, you know, watch every trailer and scour them for all the details, but there's another part of me that's like, let me just play the game at this point, dude, like I don't need to tell, you know, have a disembodied voice. And now we have, we're unveiling our brand new free aim system that allows you to accurately shoot heads for the first time in a Rockstar game. Well, I love the box. I love the box, sir. Yeah. It's beautiful. It's really speaking to my 80s sensibilities. I love all the pink and purple. I do think it's interesting. They kind of missed the window. Like the big 80s revival thing was kind of a few years old now. I mean, I'm, GGA is, is, is always popular, but they did kind of miss the, the sweet spot for hitting that synth wave era of, of 80s flashbacks. But this looks great. And then I, I learned from an, an IGN article today about, on the box art, there's a lot of similarities to other GGA for, like, apparently there's always a helicopter on the top left. I didn't know that. They all follow the pattern, which is really funny to me. Yeah. Also, like, I know it is just an image of, like, one static image, but actually Matt Perslow of IGN has a very detailed breakdown of, like, literally everything he could, he and the IGN team could gleam from every single piece. And it's very insightful. Like, that helicopter is from Vice City, and it's also been customized with the minigun. Is there customization in GTA 6 for helicopters? Cool. Isn't that cool? Yeah. But the header for that section was just helicopter helicopter. Also, if we, so, what's his name, Booby, the, the guy, the 100% gonna betray us, right? Like, I don't know. It's just like, yeah, it feels right, given, given like the, the overall tone of the GTA series. So I, I just, I love crime stories like that. So, yeah. Can, cannot wait. The guy in the bottom with an assault rifle, he's a named character. He has like a bio. A royal library. Yeah. And he's a bank robber. Wonderful. You're all going to bank with him. I don't know. Yeah. That's good. Yeah. When the pre-orders go live, we're going to learn so many things, we're going to learn what the costs. Do they have to actually, I was thinking about, do they actually have to tell you they're going to be like, we'll take your five bucks. Don't worry about how much. Yeah. That's interesting. I don't know. Do real retailers have to know what? Do those other things? GameStop. Do you get that? Right? Yeah. You could pre-order anything. Yeah. Even if it wasn't officially available for pre-order, GameStop would take your five bucks and reserve it. No. Yeah. Yeah. They'll do it. I do think that we are going to get prices. And if you watch the GTFM, my speculation is $7,999 standard edition with an ultra-deluxe collector's edition that has some sort of GTA online benefit, aka probably includes GTA plus. Yeah. Yeah. I completely agree. And then I think, I mean, so it comes out next week, the pre-order is open next week. We have never seen gameplay of this video game. Yeah. I don't think we're getting a gameplay trailer. And a gameplay trailer isn't really gameplay either, right? It's always like. I think this is the closest we ever get to actual gameplay is that shot of Jason entering the door because I imagine that GTA, like it pulls out a little bit and that's where you can actually walk around awkwardly. And I'll just say this whole gameplay, like that's, that's a line. This is an engine. Yeah. It's a bunch of, I mean, go ahead, Sam. Oh, I just have a goof, but it was just that if Nick could just sail the things he said on his other podcast of this podcast, it would make it really easy for me. So it saved me time for our listeners. Maybe now that you have them refined too, you'll even make bad ideas. Yeah. I can, I can workshop it for a second, too. So you, you guessed 8999? My guess is 7980. So $80. Yeah. Like the Nintendo first party, you know, the Fire Emblem fortunes, fortunes weed is that what it is? Wait, is that one? That was 80 bucks. That one's going to be 7999. Yep. I think if Fire Emblem and Mario Kart World are $80, GTA is going to be $80. And then I completely agree that they'll have some, you know, a hundred or $140 edition or whatever. It gives you GTA. It gives you a sharp card or whatever it gives you. So you, you're assuming that online is launching with it? No. My guess is that it'll launch after GTA V's online mode launched two weeks after launch. And it was borderline unplayable for like 72 hours straight. So Jeffrey, who was there I lived with, man, he actually made a good point. Like they don't really need to like put any sort of arbitrary time limit on themself. Like he's speculating a month after launch, basically when it's ready, you know, the CDPR method of it'll be ready when it's ready. GT on enjoy the single player campaign. Yeah. Someone pointed out though that I think $80 is totally possible. But someone pointed out that is if it does come out at 70, no other game will ever get away with $80 again. Sorry. That's hard to kill it. Yep. That's it. Take two could kill it for good, except for maybe Nintendo, because they just don't care. They don't care. Nick, do you know what Red Dead's special edition was? It was a collector's edition off the top of my head. I don't know. But it came with a lot of trinkets. Yeah. They did do that though. Yeah. Yeah. As they did with GTA 5, there's a big box with the map and all that stuff. And, you know, perfect for guides that map will have to figure out how to expense one because the matter. I remember the Red Dead maps. Yeah. It was great. Yeah. Paper map. Well, I'm starting to get very excited for this. Yeah. Again, it's the point where I'm like, I know it's going to be good. I will see you in November. It'll at least be competent at the very least. Yeah. I want to see a bunch of promotional stuff. I hope they do. Well, I think all kinds of crazy stuff between now and then this fall. I think we'll see a lot of cool out of home marketing for like, mm-hmm. Cool stuff. I mean, you know, is this going to be the last big, truly like AAA mass market mainstream game not made with AI that's all kind of like hand-built, hand-crafted, open world. You know, they like, you know, like it or not like it, just the story of unlimited time and money to make whatever they want just doesn't exist in commercial art, like it just doesn't because it can't, right? And so like, that's just so cool and like fascinating to me, like even if you don't like it, just kind of engaging with it on that level is always really interesting. Well, what's that Albert Einstein quote? I know not what development tools GTA 7 will be made with, but GTA 8 will be developed with sticks and stones. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Famously. For at all. Albert Einstein. Okay, let's share what we've been playing. I'm just about wrapping up 007 first light. I think I'm right at the end and Nick, you said you finished it. Yes. I finished it. But I really, really like it. But you sound like you're a little bit softer on it than I. You know, I think the game has an excellent first half showing where you get to do the James Bond stuff. You do the Academy, which is incredible. The tutorial bar mission is outstanding. Your first mission where you do the art gallery, like, or no, it was a chess, it was a chess tournament on this, you know, James Bond to ask real estate, all so good. But as the game progresses, you start to get funneled into more like linear style sequences that are very fun and exciting. But it's not that like Hitman meets James Bond that I thought I was surprised. I never really got back to that. You only do that like three times in the whole game. You only do James Bond. Yeah. Three times in the game. So I hope it's that about that. And the Vietnam level is maybe my favorite level just look wise, but like it's not even as complex as the chess level, which is like, because you kind of just kind of go to little parts. There's not much sneaking around to do like, yeah, I mean, that just tells me I want more of this game though. Yes. That's incredible. Like a game as a service, you know, Hitman style, they keep adding these open world-esque areas. The way they do, I mean, the way they've already talked about doing with like the return of Bob Ma for 007's next like DLC update. Yeah. Did you finish this, Sam? Well, I am, I'm at the end of that, well, I got past that, then I was driving a big car around again. I must be at the end. I don't know how many levels there are. How many levels are there? 11? 11 missions? Oh, yeah. I think I'm on 9 or 10, then. Are you in the desert still? Or are you in a tropical location? No. No, no, no. I would pass the tropical location. Oh, okay. So you're near the end of the game. Yeah. Yeah. Go to the Antarctic Circle. Yeah. That's right.
- That beginning of that level is so cool. They do the James Bond intro since it's like that. - But then you don't do this stuff afterwards. It's like the beginning, it's like a lot, you get a lot of tease at the beginning of these levels was like, oh, you're gonna do this, this, and this. But then it doesn't, you don't really do any of that after this certain point. It's such a robust like tool set that they have available and it just feels like you don't really get to use it all that often outside a couple key missions. But otherwise, it's still a great game, don't get me wrong. I'm glad I spent my hard earned money on this and really enjoyed it. - Justin, are you playing it? - No, not right now. - Well, it's really, really good. And a couple other notes, they handle the music really well 'cause they hold back the James Bond theme. 'Cause he's not James, he doesn't even have his license at the beginning, he's becoming-- - He doesn't even know what Martini did over it. - Yeah, I know, he has to learn about that. - There's so many fake outs in the game. It's like, "Oh, what would you like to drink there?" - But that's good, like I like that. They don't just be like, this is how he learned that he only likes martinis this way. Like there's a little bow tie thing, it's just like that. They have that, but for the most part, it's restrained. I think that's great. And the music is exactly that. It has that kind of like shadows-esque surf sound and has the right chord progressions that get you to those cool minor changes which sounds like spy music to us now, but then they don't play the theme. but they even work it into the title screens. You notice this? - Yeah. - Like when you boot up the game, you get the splash screens of the logos and the epilepsy warning. And then finally it reveals the title screen. And there's always like a big horn like, (mimics horn) but then it's reading your save file. So the deeper you are into the game, it starts to down more and more like the theme. - All three different locations for the splash. Any game that changes the splash screen when you start to the base, but where you are in the game, it's so good. - All right, Anya Jones with like the hot-off. - Oh, hell yeah. - It's like the start and then you like put the hat on. - I am a little bit worried about, you know, what comes next from James Bond. I'm not talking about the games because I think this game's like story and it's portrayal of a young James Bond is so good that whomever is adapting James Bond next for a movie or a TV series. I know Amazon Prime owns it. Like, you got an uphill battle 'cause this is a pretty damn good one. - And this is a good bond, too, I really like him. - He's a great bond, I'm gonna miss this bond if we don't get him anymore, you know? - Yeah. - Yeah, we gotta rank the bonds. I think the first is James Bond, right? - Yeah, that's definitely true. Yeah. What did you start playing after 007? - So, it's a game that I know I've never really been as into, but it's finally got its hooks in me. After the Nintendo Direct that happened. I was like, let me finally check out Xenoblake Chronicles Definitive Edition, Nintendo Switch 2 edition. - Is your hike because of the announcement? - Yeah, and I don't really care about the Xenoblake Chronicles games. I've tried multiple times. I've owned this version for Switch for forever. So I gave Nintendo and monoliths off my $9.99. I bought the upgrade pack to, you know, play the game at quote unquote 60 frames per second. It works at 60 frames per second for a little bit. But when you get to some areas, it still struggles pretty significantly, which makes me think they need to do a little bit of optimization, but regardless, I'm having a good time with it. It's finally clicked with me and it's the quintessential podcast game. Watch a TV show, watch some YouTube watch, basically anything else and just kind of grind it 'cause it kind of scratches that MMO style combat meets Final Fantasy XII combat where you kind of just walk into things and you see all the things that we just kind of let the gameplay itself a little bit. But the story hooks got to a point where I'm like, "Okay, this is interesting." So that's mostly what I'm talking about. - Are you doing four digits of damage yet? - I am doing four digits of four digits. - That's how you know, you're really gonna commit to a JRPJ. - And I do love it when-- - If you start hitting over 999, then-- - That's when it pops off. And I do love a game that puts you in a giant hub area and there's just like one giant enemy that's like 40 levels higher than you and you're like, "Oh, shoot, I gotta stay away from that guy. I'll come back later." That's always a nice little touch. - Yeah, I've never played a xenoblade game, but the fans say he speaks so highly of them. - Everyone says like, "Future Redeem, the DLC for three, makes playing all of the games worth it." So they said it's one of the-- - It's such a trap man. - I know, I'll do it. - But I'm a 30 hours into the three games. - My brain is wired, like, well, I guess I gotta play all three of the games now. So I'll report back because they're dropping the updates for each xenoblade Chronicles game, not all at once. So like, xenoblade Chronicles two is at the end of August, I believe, with three hitting in December. So it's like, I got two months to beat this one, got like four months to beat the second one, then three. It's all good luck. - So we're good. - And those numbers that Justin just said are not an exaggeration. I've been overseeing some of the guides that we kind of missed and the guides we need to put together for this. And we're talking about, you know, 200 hours of game play for these games. - I think they're 80 hours each, give it a try. - They added a motorcycle to the game, which makes navigating the open world so much easier. But that, they just added that with this 999 expansion. I'm like, you mean I had to walk this before? This is nuts. - That's funny. Well, if they added sword combat and took it out of a turn-based hell of them, I would play these two. - All right, well, Justin, what have you been playing? - Well, I regret to inform you, or maybe, no, let me, I'm pleased to announce that I'm back on, I'm back on my factorial bullshit. - Okay. - Just all-- - I was hoping you get back to Lego. - What happened to the Lego project? - Yeah, maybe. I need to be at a different, like whenever I get really stressed out, I have to kind of defrag my brain and go back to my conveyor belts for a while. And then I think I need to reach a new level of stress before I want to solo play Lego games. - Well, there's the new one though. I thought that might tempt you back here. - Yeah, yeah, no, I do. I am playing Lego Star Wars with my daughter and so that's been really fun. But no, factorial, I mean, I'm playing it. I've talked about it on the show before. It's like the most modable video game. And so there's always, I've described it as factorial, two, three, four, and five can all be modded into the original with, you know, it's a completely, the game of factorial that you play is actually a mod that like you install on top of the engine. Like that's how modable it is. And so, you know, new materials and new sort of production lines and new, you know, new ores that you mine and new goals and new enemies like all that stuff. And so, you know, install a mod pack and now I'm good for another 200 hours or so probably. - Do you ever assume in on the little guy slowly, like we just saw? - No, I'm always as zoomed out as I can be. Currently dealing with, I have a surplus of ash on making way, way too much ash. And then you need to get rid of, you can sort the ash into different minerals and, you know, and anyway, that's what I'm, that's the production line that I'm dealing with right now. So I'll let you know how that goes next week. - Got it. - Couple other games to mention. Is there anything else you're playing Sam? I know you wanna move into a couple of movies. - I have a lot of games to mention. It's Steam Next Fest, baby. - Oh yeah, I am playing Steam Next Fest demos, but yeah, Sam, you can run through some of them. - Well, I'm sure you played what I played because I immediately grabbed order of the sinking star, which is the creator of the witness and the, and braids new game. It's like a top down block pushing game and the block pushing is super annoying and funny. - It's so cool. - It's like, it's so cool. - It's so cool. - What's that? - It's like, it's the name of that top of game. - Like, adventures of Lolo, Lolo, like is what I call them. - Do you know the story behind that game? It's so fascinating of like, you know, so it's so cool about these block pushing games, like Ol's genre and Jonathan Blow licensed. I don't remember if it's three of them or four of them. Like that already exists. So like, in this game, you can go north, south, east, or west and when you do that, you are exploring the puzzles from another video game that have their own mechanics and then, but then he stitched it together with that class studio that it has, you know, a new, like, unifying story and new twists and you can take things from one of the games into the other game that's, like, make it this game that has thousands and thousands of handcrafted puzzles. The way that he did it was sort of take four indie games and license them to, like, remix it as his own. It's so strange. - Yeah, so you have multiple characters, like one character, as soon as you just look at the block, it swaps spaces with you. So you can't even, like, walk near and face it. It'll, you'll swap immediately on the teleport. - That's amazing. - That one's really hard to wrap your brain around. Another one can only move blocks if you touch the block and then walk away from it. It attaches to your button, you drag it along. Like, it's so complicated, you know? And, you know, it's got a nice little graphic set. It kind of has a map overworld, which I like and it's got that going for it. So I played that and then another demo I wanted to call out, it was just extremely rude for a Steam not to have. I played Star Fox demo and that game is just really not really upgraded from, you know, Nintendo 64. I've been playing the Nintendo 64 game and enjoying it, actually. I like the Super Nintendo game best, the first one, to, I like, a little bit, as you can see from my review. But I never really played the 64 one more than, like, playing through it once. But now I'm trying to do that secrets and like, get through it all. And then I went and played the demo and I was like, oh, this is the exact same game. They even keep, like, I think it's funny in this level that we're seeing right now that the meteor is all the same size. - Yeah. - 'Cause when you play it on the Nintendo 64, you're like, oh, they had one model of meteor and they use it. And then they kept that because this game is exactly the same. It's so interesting and, you know, without passing judgment
I just think it's like such a funny thing from Nintendo to do and it probably shouldn't be the price that it is, whatever the price is. - I think it's $49.99 and $59.99. - Oh, yeah, this is where the physical costs are. - There's like a deal going around where you can get the physical version of game for $10 off, so I just pre-ordered it. I was not really excited for this when it was announced, but then I played the demo and I was like, it really is the benefit and hats off to the development team behind it because the original Star Fox 64 is so good, man. It's just picking this up and playing it again. I'm like, damn it, it's still really good and it looks really nice, so. - It is very pretty. - I am gonna be picking this up day one. - Yeah. - Yeah, I never played this 64 game so. - Whoa, what a treat. That's exciting. Is it still fun, Damon? - We can do that episode 'cause again, I didn't really experience that game that much back in the day and I just played through it. I thought it was still fun. - Cool. - It's a little janky. - Yeah. - Oh man, look at this. I miss one video games look like this, man. - This, this in the original Star Fox, this level and where you're fighting the robots in the boss of the stuff. That's pretty impressive for the Nintendo 64. It felt a little bit more like, when there's big ships that you're going by and stuff, that feels a little bit more like the Star Wars game. - Yeah, the boss looks awesome. - The Squadron. - A Rogue Squadron, yeah, yeah, yeah. - Yeah, yeah, the level, and there's a little bit of Rogue Squadron elements in this which I thought was cool. This is, I think, pre-Rogue Squadron. - Yeah, it would be cool. Couple more games to shout out. I finished Blackjacket and I don't know if you were here. Are you aware of Blackjacket? - No, I'm not. - This is Rogue like, it's Blatcho, but Blackjack. - Oh, okay. - With a story like Hades. - All right. - It's slowly doled out over multiple runs. You're playing Blackjack in hell. - I like the setup. - Same basic rules. - That's fun does. - Trying to get as close to 21 without going over, but you can break your cards in all the different ways. And you're playing, it's voice-acted, you're like chatting with these people as you play them. And you start to learn that you have relationships with these people you're here in hell for a reason. Everyone's really disappointed and disappointed in you. And then eventually if you, every time you beat them, you'll strengthen your relationship with them. And then when you've raised your relationship with everyone sufficiently, then you can face the final boss and leave heaven, or leave hell, so. Yeah, I finished all that. This is great. What's that, Joseph? - It's the final boss, the devil. - Unclear, actually, possibly. - Okay. - Unclear. - Okay. - Could be. This is one of the best games I've played this year. - Okay. - Big recommendation for me. And then just a really cool little thing that I found, you know, in the '80s here we had our, we had Dragon Slayer Space Ace. Unbeknownst to me, Japanese arcades in the '80s had their own sort of laser disc game, FAD. I don't know if you knew the same. - Some came over here. In fact, most of the laser disc games that are kind of rare are like adaptations of the Japanese games. - Well, the one I'm talking about is from Tito called Time Gal. - Hell yeah, I know Time Gal. - And it wasn't, I don't think the arcade game came here, but it was released on the, either the Saturn or the Sega CD. - Oh, wow, this is beautiful. - Yeah, it's just like Dragon Slayer cool. - But it's '80s anime. - That's great. - Which is so good. You know, in the gameplay it's just, you just point in the direction of the flashing yellow light. That's it. - But you can generally put these in, you just pop the CD-ROM and like whatever. - Laser disc in the machine that you have. So these are at California Extreme, these crazy Japanese ones. - Well, there's an HD remastered version of this on steam. - Oh, wow. - It's like that's what I've been playing. Yeah, they just totally ripped Godzilla's roar for this experience. - Oh, wow, wow. - Yeah, it's exactly. It's just lifted from the movie. - Yeah, it looks really good. - I mean, it's great. It's a breeze to play through. And then you get to watch this cool little anime. Time Gal is like very cute. She goes to all these different time periods. She's chasing some criminal. And it's less gruesome than Dragon Slayer 'cause when she fails, she just gets like bonked on the head and turns into a Chibi version, ever so. - Love it. - So that's cool. I really had a lot of fun playing through this. Time Gal, there's an HD remaster. - Yeah, I got to say. - To be in Japan and arcade with these games and when they were in their heyday. - Yeah. - I'm trying to think, I'm not prepared. Next week, if there's time, I'll share more next-fest highlights 'cause I've been checking out some cooler demos, but I'm feeling like on the spot, I need to gather my thoughts. - Cool. (gun firing) - Game Creative Staff. Wolf Dean. - All right, let's check in with the listeners. - Hey, this is-- - Hello. - Listeners, remember you can always reach us at the email address,
[email protected], just like Bruce did. Bruce says, "I have a question, mainly for Sam. "My wife and I have been bonding lately over pinball. "We don't have any pinball arcades near us, "so every time we want to play, "it's about a 45 minute to an hour drive. "Problem is, we aren't very good. "So we're driving quite a ways "than blowing through our quarters in a hurry. "We're having fun, but it sure would be nice "to have one credit last longer than three minutes." So my question is, what are some good tips for beginners to pinball? - Okay, this is perfect for my ngi.com segment. That stands for not get an internet, get a clip pinball instead. So I do have some really basic cool stuff that you can start, you walk up to a pinball machine, okay? So every pinball machine, basically from the '80s onwards, you wanna get to multi-ball, the easiest multi-ball usually. What does that mean? That means it kicks out two or more balls and you get scoring and you can kind of just score really well during that. They're all kind of set up that way. So there's a color coding that you might not know about with pinball, which is that generally, since the '80s, a green lit-up shot is your lock shot. What is a lock shot? It means it holds a ball for multi-ball. So if you light up something green on the play field, shoot for that because that green arrow or that green dot is gonna be your locks. And you can read the little card in the game about what more about multi-ball, but sometimes it doesn't get out of date because the games get updated so much, but there should be a central multi-ball to go for. Usually like in the Transformers game, I just did a video about fry gin. It was the center left shot, this is up kicker. You hit it once and it lights the lock, hit it twice and it locks the ball in one of the Transformers cassette decks. And then you do that for more shots that you just spits out all the balls you play multiple. That's my one, that's one. The other color you should know is orange. Orange is extra ball. So that means that if something in your game lights up orange, that generally means if it's this eb or extra ball, if you hit that shot, you're gonna get a fourth ball in play. So that's pretty good. So those are two things that can extend your game. The other one is just that every game has an ability to give you a free game. It's generally if you get a high score or if you just at the end of the game match two numbers. You might know this, but generally, just don't start the next game. Wait for that to happen because it really wants you to just go ahead and start your next game or put in your quarters and coin up and skip that, but you're gonna run the risk of missing out in your free game. So don't walk away to here and if you hear a knock, a really loud knock sound, that's your free game. You're gonna save some quarters that way. I keep going, but those are good starts. Something I would also three, three minutes is not that bad just to say. I mean, that's like, I think most arcade games back in the day were designed to play for just two minutes. Yeah, two minutes for quarter. Yeah. Sam, what are your thoughts on tilting? Oh, yeah, I can talk about that. So nudging is what you kind of call that. No, you're right. So basically in all modern games, you can shake the game to save the ball. So the best way to do this, if you're just super simple-minded, there's things called outlands and on the far right and left side, you can drain the ball there or you can drain the ball in the middle of the game, right? But on those outlands, if the ball gets anywhere near them, like if it's within any inch of them, if you push the game towards the wall, then it's going to close that space that the ball can get into because the game is going up and down really fast. And it's making the slot for the ball to accidentally be lost smaller. So if it's just going, that's what general, that's how you can start nudging a game. The game's going to let you do that. But if you do that too hard, the game's going to say, hey, you did that too hard and give you a tilt warning. And it might give you two if you do it really hard. But just be aware that you are allowed to do that. And if you get really good, you're never even going to get tilt warnings or you're going to get tilt warnings and then not do it again, right? Because the next ball, those tilt warnings reset. If you tilt, you lose your score in your bonus, which is you keep all your points you've made, you don't get this bonus score and you drain the ball. So that's that. And then I guess if you want like a Verde tip moving on from my level, just to please pinball players, don't flip the flippers at the same time. Don't do that. It makes you look like a 10-year-old or a five-year-old. And it's just embarrassing. It's technique like you can do that, but it makes you look silly. So just be aware of that. I'm not criticizing you for it because that's like throwing the ball underhanded and basketball. It probably is a good technique, but it just makes you look so stupid. Hey, everybody, this guy's using ball flickers. Yeah. Exactly. But that's the aesthetic thing. But here's another one. You don't have to flip. When the ball is coming down to your flipper, and it's just right there, it's just going to hit your flipper. It's not going to drain. You don't have to hit the button. If you don't hit the button, it just hits your flipper really nicely and it bounces over to the other one. And you flip up the other one and it traps the ball. Scoop. Pinball hotline. I love it. Bruce says of all the machines I've tried so far, monster.
Bash has been my favorite. - That's my favorite game too, that Lord of the Rings. - It's up there, Monster Bash is top five, I would say. - Yeah, Monster Bash is nice 'cause you can walk up and it's just about making a band of monsters. And each monster has a shot tied to it. So the ramps are the bride of him by the Bash Toyas, Frankenstein, the mummy is behind the pop-uppers. And all you need to do is just hit those things. So you just can walk up and build the band by hitting those shots multiple times. Just like Lord of the Rings, honestly. - Cool. - Okay. - All right, Nick, last week, we were talking about-- - NGI. - We were talking about all the games that were announced during the showcase week. One of them was Vivarium, which is probably the Xbox showcase, do you remember that one? It's like another anime looking game. That game's being made by Serenity Forge. And the top comment on the YouTube version of last week's episode is from Serenity Forge. - Oh wow. - I said, thanks so much for the shout out on Vivarium. We're really glad to hear you enjoyed it. - That rocks, yeah, the game looks gorgeous. - This game looks very cool. - It looks very Boku no Nasu Yasumi. The My Summer vacation room, the PlayStation game, where you're just kind of hanging out for 30 days, at your uncle's house, and I was gonna hang it out for a minute. - I was trying to think of that game when you, I completely agree, also put it out on a laser disk. - Yeah, exactly. - Yeah. - Yeah, this is stunning, and I think they made like a big statement like this is made by real people, all handcrafted, I'm like, dude, they know exactly how to get me interested, this looks so charming, and I cannot wait to check this out. - Yeah, that looks very cool. And then also Nick Fallen Sniper comments it, it is criminal to not have Nick on after all the GRPG announcements. - Brother, I was screaming in the control room during the final fantasy show case. I was like, why is no one on the stage talking about final fantasy in the post show? What is happening here? Yeah, that, there's the Persona 4 Revival, the Persona 6 Revival, so much good GRPG. - See no bledness. - Another Zeno bledness. - Another Zeno bled genesis, which is cool. - Fire Emblem. - Fire Emblem. - We're spoiled. GRPG fans, we're eating final fantasy resident. - Final fantasy resident, yeah. - There's so many, and that in action games, like the Mitchell Salsman style of action game, we're just all over, and I kept then watching this and thinking like, oh, Mitchell and Nick are gonna have so many great stuff. - Dragon Quest 2, man, dude, the new Dragon Quest, I put it directly in my veins. One thing that's not JRPG related, but still action game related. Apparently, Devil May Cry 5 had its strongest selling week ever for selling its copies of its game since launch. This past-- - Well, we just, that happened to Red Dead Redemption 2, also. - I think it's because it got a Switch 2 release, but I'm like, dude, that means we're so close to another Devil May Cry. Please, please, Capcom, give it to me. - Did you like the Gritty DMC? - People aren't gonna like me for saying this, but I did like DMC Devil May Cry quite a bit. I think it's some of the coolest level designs I've seen in a video game. Not necessarily a Devil May Cry game, but I still really liked it. - Who made that one? - That one, wasn't that Ninja Theory? - I was just gonna say it, wasn't that Ninja Theory? - Yeah, good, great level design, great music. I think a solid game. - Should I have them making that? Should I have them making another DMC 2 or whatever? - That'd be great. - Yeah. - Then the fans could all fight each other. It's fantastic. DMC versus Devil May Cry. This game writes itself, both Dante's fight each other. Oh, that'd be so silly. - Oh, that'd be cool. - Yeah. - Oh, fan service. - Did you watch the Netflix series? - Oh yeah, Netflix series is great. So it's a good time, okay. Very good time. - Finally, Bad Wolf Bay commented that they said, "Should this game have Tifa "and it should be a new regular question?" - The answer's always yes. - Yeah. - That's what I'd say. So I think you asked that in 20 questions or joked about it at least, and I'm like, yeah, it should be, it's just not gonna be very helpful 'cause the answer's just always gonna be yes, right? - Yeah, yeah. I mean, it just, it more or less a question the developers should ask themselves when they get their design docs in order. Should Tifa be in this? We licensed Tifa. Jonathan Blow should have been like, I'm gonna license the puzzles from these games and Tifa. - And Tifa. - I'm gonna license push and blocks around. - That one jump puzzle from the original Final Fantasy VII that is borderline impossible unless you have perfect frame timing. You know the one. You have to swing heading up to Shinra headquarters. The nightmare. I forgot to bring it out during what we've been playing. I know we need to move on, but just in the speedest run of things I saw back rooms last night, which I, it's okay. - It's okay. - It's just recommending, it was fun to watch. Really amazing carpentry. The best carpentry I've seen in a movie all year. Really impressive, like the sets are really cool. And then I saw that you Spielberg go to and it was great. - Great. - Disclosure game. - It was a bad, it was a bad movie, but it was really fun going to the theater to watch it. - Okay. - Yeah, like it is a really, it's corny and you know, it's like full of those kind of Spielberg like, like sap moments. And the alien stuff doesn't make any sense in the end. It's just like what, all this was such a waste. And those CG animals look bad. But then everything else looks so good. Like every time Steven Spielberg's like doing like a, you know, like a Dolly shot, like going across the room and being more like focused, or you know, he's using his lens flare while a train drags a car around. It's so cool. It feels great. It's like watching Indiana Jones movie with a bunch of like, uncharismatic actors. - Talk about aliens. - I mean, Steven Spielberg's master is always there. Yeah, the master is always there. Fable is meant, Fable's meant was fantastic. - And it's John Williams. The score is incredible. - Yeah, yeah, it's just gonna be like, the final John Williams score, like. - I think every John will score it together. - They've never made a movie without each other. - That's true. - It's incredible. - John Williams did like catch me if you could. - I don't even really think. I guess so. - What was this movie? - Another die. - What was the movie like from a couple years ago? Alien Invasion movie with the girl who plays Abby on last of us. And the title is something like, no one is coming to help you. - No one is going to save you or something. - No one's going to help you. It was like a, like a one or like, there's a thing. - Yeah, it's like, it's where she lives alone, out in a rural environment and then. - It was on Hulu. - Or dropped on Hulu. Like, exclusively, that was the fun one. - That was a good movie. That was a great movie. - That was a fun one. - I think you could wait for back rooms, what was it called? - Yeah. - What's it called? - Yes, to come out on streaming or whatever, and you're not going to miss a lot. But it was just really fun seeing a very loud, 70 millimeter, gorgeous print. With some projection errors, which was always fun in the theater and, you know, we got lunch and got some beers and watch shows. - It was great. - I love that. - Some movie. - I loved it. - And I loved obsession. - So I haven't seen either one. - I'll just see that this weekend. - I love the story of back rooms. - That's this 20 year old. - His dad was a telltale. - Dad, we're the telltale. You can, there's like, whatever. - It was a Facebook group where, like, in 2015 he's like, my son wants to get into film making. Does anyone have any tips for him? And now, his movie made more than Star Wars. - Well, like, also, he goes, my son's YouTube channel has like, his first video, I was like, 50 million views. Is that normal? And it was like, no, that's not normal. - Honestly, like the technical nature of this movie is great. Like, the acting's good. Like, it's just, you know, it just has, it's a little drawn out and I did like it a lot. But I don't think it's not like a theatrical experience. I would recommend for people, but it was cool. The girl from shrinking is in it. She's great. - One thing I really enjoyed, 'cause I've never watched the back room series. So I've been watching that because I was such a big fan of this movie. But one thing that really stood out to me is such an interesting, like, game developer mind. The thing that got me interested is an interview with Parsons where he just says, you know, I got approached when Half-Life Alex came out and I was ripping models from the game to do stuff within Blender. And I was like, oh, this dude knows Ball, like he's cool. And apparently he designed the original YouTube series in Blender, it's all digitally done. - It's all Blender, yeah. - This base does not exist. But then when this movie came out, he did the pro lighting in Blender and he basically sent his director of photography. Here's the Blender file for what I'm thinking of how this movie's gonna work. And the director of photography was like this kind of rules 'cause like this guy has a very distinct and clear vision going into this movie. How it should look and how it should feel. Any stuff like that I'm a big sucker for. - Yeah, yeah, it's like the ultimate storyboards. - It's smart though. It's a good use of the medium of, you know, game dev to some extent. Or I guess just digital illustration. - And by the way, like three weeks in or whatever, the theater was packed for this. - Yeah, same with obsession. - Yeah, I watched obsession after IG and live 'cause I had no time for movies leading up to it. And our theater, our screening was packed. I was very impressed. - Yeah, I felt that people are really participatory and having a good time. - I wanna see both of these and I wanna see the furious. - Yes. - I even wanna see masters of the universe. That's supposed to be good. But I just haven't made it to the theater in a long time. - I've heard nothing but good stuff about that movie. - Let this be a PSA though. If you're watching, if you're a game scoop listener, I don't expect this behavior from you. So tell your friends, put your damn phones away in the movie theater. It is so common nowadays. I see so many people either one, chatting with their friends in a way that's not movie theater appropriate or they're trying to get a rise out of people. Like, make your buddies laugh. Don't do that. And put your damn phone away. I will yell at you if you are in the screening with me. - And can you imagine Nick yelling? I mean, this is the most stupid he can do. - I always just go, put your phone away. And that usually does that. - I'll try to make it scary. - That's good. You know, we all know what you're doing. You're playing zen pinball and flipping those flippers at the same time. - Yeah. - Just double embarrassment. It's probably a Sonic game to boot. - There is a Sonic pinball game, isn't there? Surely that's it. - Sonic's pinball. - Well, I mean, I'm playing here, my friends. - I'm sure this is something like that. - Modern stuff too. - All right. Mix for a little pinball. - Yep. (upbeat music)
(upbeat music) That brings us to video game 20 questions. Our suggestion comes from Michael Hamm in Durham, North Carolina, who says, "Dear esteemed counselors "of Game Scoop, I may not be Matt Jones or Big Tony style, "but I have been listening to Game Scoop every week "since the episode numbers were in the single digits." - Whoa. - I've heard about a lot of amazing games in the 20 years that I've been listening to Scoop, so I thought I would suggest one for 20 questions that I fell in love with specifically because I learned about it on Scoop. There are many games like this, but most of them have already been used on the show. However, I cannot find any evidence of redacted being used yet. Thanks for 20 years of laughs and expert scoopation. And with that, let the question begin. - I think what he's going for is just awful licensed games. There's so many examples of that, but this one has been used. - Yeah, interesting that he learned about it on Scoop. What are some games that we've championed over the years? - Could they be just some games? - I mean, they could be anybody games. - Yeah. - Is this game from the '70s, '80s or '90s? - No. Not Time-Gal. - No. - It could have been Time-Gal. - Or Time Traveler, hand others. - The loser just game. - Is that the hologram game? - Yeah. - Oh, I've always wanted to see that one. - Can you play this game on the Switch? - I think it's the witness. - I don't think Damon doesn't know if the witness is on Switch or not. - I don't think you can play this game on the Switch. - I was thinking about the witness earlier. - I do not think you can play this game on the Switch. - Can you play this game on Steam first time for everything? - Yes. - Okay, this is cool. - Oh, oh, oh, now I'm. - Only there are some sort of device that you could. - Let's find out, let me wait. - We wait with baited breath. Do we want to. - Is this about Steam? - Yeah, he's checking on Steam right now, I think. Do we want to maybe like console generation? Like, I mean, I would assume if it's on Steam, it's like 360 era and up. - Oh, this is so weird. It is not on, you cannot play it on Switch. - Cannot play it on Switch and you cannot play it on Steam or we're still waiting on that one. - Okay, yes, you can play on Steam. - Okay, okay, it is Steam playable. - But the fact that it's iffy is super interesting. - Yeah, I agree, that's very sus. - Was this developed in Japan? - No. - What? - Okay. - I mean, I think not knowing if it's on Steam or not is very, like I assume it's like a Ubisoft game or like, you know, something that like maybe would be on some, yeah, like a Blizzard game. - Yeah. - Call of Duty was not on Steam for a hot second. - Is this in the PlayStation 4 generation of consoles? - No, that's five. - Is this playable on a PlayStation console? - Yes. PS3? - Yes. - Wait. - Okay. - It's playable on PS3 is what you're asking. - I mean, yeah. - Okay. - It is. - Okay. - What? - Why you just don't know if-- - Why are you all looking at me like that? - Right now we don't know if it launched for PS3 or if it got ported from PS2 to PS3. - Okay. - I think it launched on the PS3. - Did this game exist as a physical release? - Yes. - Okay. So not like a pain or something like that. I feel like pain should be on Steam. - Today is this game part of a collection. - Well, that'll be a freebie, but probably. Probably, but I won't count that one. - Okay. - PlayStation 3 game, that's on Steam. - Is this part of a series? - Yes. - Was this game published by EA Activision or Ubisoft? - No. - That's 10. - That goes my theory about it being on a weird launcher. - Was it, is this game kind of focused on single player? - Yeah. - Okay, single player centric. - Do you play as a human? - Unclear. (laughs) - Oh, so maybe it's one of those city builder type things you can't see yourself. - I'm still going back to this. I'm still going back to this game being a scoop gem. - On PS3, a scoop gem, and it's on Steam now. Maybe it's like overlord or something like that. I don't know. I feel like you guys would have been in an overlord. - Yeah. - I wasn't building it. - I like that you're metagaming by like, what would we have been into 600 episodes? - That means like the 360 era, that feels like a cool enough game to talk about on game scoop, like, yeah, that all tracks. - Yeah, you're right. We do like overlord. - Do you play as some kind of invisible omnipotence that controls things? - Yes. - Oh. Okay, so it is a builder to some extent. - I mean, yeah, except, yeah, I mean you have the driver of a car. - On PS3 though. - Yeah. Okay, is this a. - Is this a strategy game? - No. - Is, what are we, how many questions are you at? - You've asked 14. - Is this a builder game, like a city builder? - No. So it's 15. - You play an omniscient force, it's not a builder game, it's not a strategy game. - Maybe it's a puzzle game. - Black and white too. - I was, it's not. - Oh God. - I was thinking puzzle game too. I don't know that I want to burn a question on it. - Maybe a Tetris in the middle of all this Tetris stuff, or rhythm game. - Well, no, you play as the guitar player in a rhythm game. - I was thinking about, I was thinking about it being guitar hero or rock band. You know, it'd be a little bit weird to hear about it first on Game Scoop, but I didn't help popularize guitar hero back in the day. - Do we want to. - But I think you play, you're in the band in guitar hero. And I'm an omnipotent force. - Yeah. - No. Is this a, well, I don't know. - The puzzle game is worth, I think it, is it worth asking if it's a puzzle game? - I think so, because of it's now, we got a really reassessful, it could be sport, like a sport management game. - But we have strategy. Like I would argue football managers is a strategy game. - Yeah, that's a good point. - Is this a puzzle game? - Yes. - Puzzle game. - P-S-3 era puzzle game that is on Steam. - Part of the series. - Not Japanese. - Not Japanese. - Is it Luminous, probably? It's probably Luminous. - That's Japanese. - Is that the right era? - That's Japanese. - Oh, you're right, yeah, you're right. And plus that was P-S-P. - I'm thinking it's a Tetris company game from that era, but I can't remember, is that the era where people played that Tetris game that made them cry because it was so good? - No, Tetris effect. - That's a really mean way to phrase. - That would be from the great news. - Yeah. - And then in the off. - I've never heard that. - Justin has. - To one of the great trailers for a game though. - Tetris effect is incredible. - I never played it in VR. - I feel like if I played that in VR, that probably would send me over to you. - That was PS4, that was PS4 era. - Techs, Tetris effect. - Also, that's from Tetsuya Mizuguchi still. So, they can't be sure. - Yeah, sure, sure. But it's Tetris company, which it's, you know, published. - Outside of Japan. - Damn, what game is this? - We got Medios, we got, we've never made it over there, Japan. - No, and it's on the PS3. - What if it's just the witness or something? - What if it's like Super Hexagon or something like that? Were you guys into that? - Yes, what if it's got rules? I reviewed that game for IGN. - Or it's not a, it's a puzzle. This is a puzzle game. - What up Hegel? - It's on, or Zoom or whatever it's. - Pegel, Peglin. - Pegah. - Well, no. - Pegah on the rope. - Pegal, Zoom, Zoom is good. Yeah, pop cap game, except those are all EA. - Jim. - Is that a problem? - Yeah, we ruled that out. - Yeah, because I asked if it was EA. So wait, so hold on. We know a lot about this game. We know it's not made in Japan. It's a puzzle game that's on the PS3 and now on Steam. And it's not published by Ubisoft EA or Activision. - Angry Birds? - Huh. - There's no way anybody heard about Angry Birds for the first time on YouTube. - Oh, we can eliminate that this was just like, mainly an iPhone game, right? 'Cause all those games we just mentioned are iPhone games. - Do people mostly think about this game as an iPhone game? - No. - Apple game? - No. - Okay, so it's not any weird PS3 port of like, - What if it's like genre, what if like flavor of like, cosmetic, like, you know, is it a fantasy game? Is it like a sci-fi? That might help us. - Oh, oh, oh, oh. It's, I bet it's puzzle quest. - I was thinking puzzle cast or like heroes of my magic or something like that. - I bet it's puzzle quest, Damon loves puzzle quest. I mean, I also love it, but it's like, we used to rant about how good that game was all the time. - It's not to be made in Japan. - I don't think so. - I was made in the United States by D3 published it, but I can't remember the developers. Okay, how can we zero in on this being puzzle quest? Does this game also have RPG elements? - No. - Shit. - I was so sure. I was so sure. - Could be blowing. - I also may not have ever come out on PS3 'cause it was DS and PSP in the beginning before then it got ported to everything else. - What about Catherine's journey? - You have one question in the guess. - I wanted to ask the Tifa question, but I won't. (laughing) - I'll give it, that's a free one. Yes, the answer is yes. - Tifa, okay, that's a free one. - And just to be clear, if you just tuned in, the question was, should Tifa be in this game? Not is Tifa in this game? - Yeah.
She should be. I mean, this is the right era. Should we just ask if it's blocks? Did we ask if it came out? You should just use the heck. Yeah, but then with there's somebody games I mentioned. Well, maybe we haven't mentioned it. Okay, do we do we ask if this game hold on just before you do that? Did we ask if this game came out in physical? Yes, we did. It does release in physical form. Wow, so then that even even even like braid. I mean, I know it's not break. You play as a little man, but like that means it can't even be something like braid. Do we want to ask the heck? I haven't finished swan limbo. We have it. Wait, no, don't start adding more games to the list that we named. Oh, wait, I actually think I know what it is. I think it's Catherine. No, no, because that's developed in Japan. Is it? Yeah, that's Atlas. I mentioned that earlier too. Do we mention this game? Yes. Oh, man. So is it because angry birds is associated with iPhone that we have to eliminate it? I mean, it did release on ps3 though, right? Yeah, but we asked it. People think about this game as a mobile game. Got it. Got it. Got it. So definitely that eliminates the cut the ropes and the. Yeah, so could it be Tetris effect? No, that was ps4. I did mention heroes of Might and Magic and I think that's a very similar puzzle quest style thing. Is we know things we wouldn't call that a puzzle game. That's like a strategy RPG. It's not a puzzle game. We did say it's a puzzle game that gets possible. We've mentioned it. Oh, man. That makes it hurt even more. I don't think it's unfinished swan or limbo because I mentioned those after Damon suggested you should use the hack. Correct. We're out of questions. Yes. Maybe it's one of the ones I mentioned, like the Pegel or Zuma. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. I guess the EA question maybe because pop cap was independent and then EA bought them after. Am I crazy to say that they even now would just publish the game. They didn't develop its king who developed those games, isn't it? No, it was pop cap. Pop cap, punk. But it was. I think it's I think I think I think Pegel's a good guess. I think Pegel's a great guess. It's weird that we wouldn't have had this before. Do we want to ask is this what do we want to lock it in? I mean, we're out of questions, right? Yeah. Yeah. Is it Pegel? Yes. It's Pegel. Yeah, we need the music. We need the music to play now. So you would call this an EA you wouldn't call this an EA game. It wasn't at the time. It was published by pop cap. Yeah. It just occurred to me. We could have done plans versus zombies and be totally convinced that's what what the answer was. Yeah, but I was thinking about it being a scoop gem, which not that we didn't like that game. So what genre did this person never know about Pagel 4? Because we have talked about Pagel kind of recently, which is kind of cool. He just he just heard us talk about on games. That's all. Oh, I thought he said that there's types of games that we talk about. But this was one of them. No, video games. It's the video game industry is so strange. Like they're like a new Pagel is such a sure bet. Right? Like just make it let a team of six people make a new Pagel. Like, they should have given it the Angry Birds treatment. And we should have like Star Wars Pagel and Marvel Pagel and like Paglin and Tifa Pagel. Paglin is for Daniel Pagel. That's a better idea. There are executives that make an obscene amount of money that we'd be furious to find out what their salaries are that you just did a better job at like their job by saying Star Wars Pagel. It's like a better idea than ideas that have been greenlit for you know, $100 million budget. The reason follow up. Pagel would be great. Yes. Sure. That would be great. Followed Angry Birds. With a pit boy thing. Crash you throw them out. It'd be so cute. Mario Pagel, they make them self. The reason I was confused about steam is because he would have pop up would have had its own launcher when this was released back in 2007. I believe that the EA, I forget the name of their launchers no longer. Yeah. But it's on steam now. Apex. I mean, I think Pagel was like a like a downloadable, executable file, right? Like, I mean, yeah, you probably just do that. Yeah, probably do it that way. This is weird. I'm on the Pagel Wikipedia page and it says that it originally sold poorly, but it was boosted by the inclusion of a special demonstration and valves the orange box. And then it became a bestseller after that. What? I don't know. I don't know. It's in the orange box. I mean, it's like a demo, like not the full year. There you go. It's part of a compilation. You know, we could basically ask as to start 20 questions. We could always ask, was this in the orange box? Is there a good chance? There's a good chance that it was in there. That's true. That got a physical releases like a pop cap collection. They probably had zoom on there as well. And the 3DS or the DS one was physical. Yeah. That's the first other platform besides PC that it came to actually. I played the Xbox 360 arcade demo so many times. This game is great. Everything pop cap was doing back then. It was great. I love all those games. They made they made Pagel and then six years later, they made Pagel 2. And then they made a crappy game called Pagel Blast. And that was it. We are. Yes. Rose. Hey, if you guys are looking for another Pagel. Pagel in is great. It's on steam. It's a roguelike Pagel. It's fantastic. Really? Yeah. It's pretty good. Pagel is cool. Cool. Around that same time. Around that same time as Pagel, pop cap released a game with the very unfortunate title Chuzzle. I'll leave you with that. What a deep tease. Thank you for the suggestion, uh, ham and Durham, North Carolina viewers listeners. If you have your own suggestions for video game 20 questions, email them to me at email address
[email protected]. And that is all the scoops that we have for you this week. Thank you, Nick. Thank you, Sam. Thank you, Justin. Thank you to Tio working behind the scenes to make this episode possible. My name is Damon. This is IJ Game Feupe and Rout. Keep on Chuzzle. I don't think you can say that.
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