‘Marvel’s Wolverine’ Deep Dive | Midnight Mash

(upbeat music) - Hi, Bob, and welcome into The Ringerverse, your nexus feed for all things fandom. I am Bentley Bird, senior editor at The Ringer and your host here at Button Mash, or today, I guess I should say, midnight mash. Every midnight boy has been on Button Mash individually, but today, for the first time, we have most of the midnight boys, a midnight quorum on the show, with one notable absence, together for an official Team X-style team up, which I guess would make me Mr. Sinister, and I do pretty much have his skin tone. With me, it's Van, out of Antium Lathen. - Van. - What up, what up? - Jome, Maverick, Adeneron. - Actually, it's pretty good. (laughing) - And Steve, Striker, Almond. - Snick, Snick, how's it going, Ben? - Yeah. Well, Wolverine isn't actually out until Tuesday. Marvel's Wolverine, that is, but we've all played it, and at least some of us have finished it. I have finished it. The review embargo was up Thursday. The critics have had their claws out, including to some extent, me and my guests, on the previous episode of Butt and Mash, but I haven't heard what you guys think, and I am dying to know. So, Sabre Tooth says to Logan, admit it, you're having fun. Will you guys admit it? You having fun with Marvel's Wolverine, developed by Insomniac Games, published by Sony, for PS5. Van, give us your take on Marvel's Wolverine so far. - I have fun, so look, here's a deal. It's kind of a high bar for me, because this game was supposed to be or being positioned and marketed as Spider-Man game, for Wolverine, it was Open World, the missions, combat system, all that and stuff. Now, there's no such thing as a Spider-Man video game. All you guys notice, there's no Spider-Man video game. - There's no Spider-Man video game? - There's no Spider-Man. - There's a virtual experience where you become Spider-Man, right? - Right, right. - Right, right, right, right. - The main length is that, of course, of course. - Right, so the game doesn't get to that point, but I felt like I was having a Wolverine experience. The combat system is both simple enough and has enough going forward to where I felt engaged in the game, sniffing around and stuff like that. I could tell that it wasn't gonna be a game that got a whole bunch of rapes from people. But I have fun. I've been having fun and I will continue to have fun, God damn it. - Joey, having fun? - I am having fun. I am having a ton of fun playing this game. I think, I mean, like you said, many people got their claws out about this game. And while I don't think it's that necessary, there is a level of, man, I wish they were to tighten this. I wish this could have been a little better. But ultimately, it's a fun game. I'm having fun playing it. I'm sure in 20 weeks when it's on discount, people will buy it and they'll be like, "Wow, this was actually really fun. I had a good time." I heard people saying that it's about the game. So, nah, it's a good time, it's a good play. For $70, I don't know. But ultimately, it's still a fun experience. - I think the main disappointment, I liked the game, too, quite a bit. But I think the main disappointment and anger that the game has kind of been getting, at least from early reviews, is the fact that there's a problem with tempering expectations because of the fact that this is the follow-up to like one of the best-selling games on the system and one of the most well-reviewed and best-selling that the studio has ever come out with. So, in that case, yes, it is a disappointment. But meeting the game on its own terms, I think it's very, very fun and it's very fine. I think that yes, there is a bit more hand-holed-ness that a lot of gamers are kind of graded by. And the hand-holed-ness that Insomniac is used to giving players does help when say you're Spider-Man and you have the entirety of Manhattan to explore. But if you're just Wolverine going and more or less a straight line throughout all his objectives, it might seem a bit grading. But overall, I think it's great. I think the cinematics are incredible. I think the performances are very noteworthy. And it's a fine, fun time playing video games if you meet the game on its own terms. If you're wondering what Charles thinks, he hasn't played it yet. He did that opt out of this pod because he hated Wolverine. He's on vacation. I wish he were here. He told me that it's going to be his weekend activity. So we'll see whether he loves Wolverine or whether he joins the chorus of complaints. But I think the expectations had a lot to do with the disappointment, obviously. And to be clear, I did not put you guys up to this. I didn't say, hey, you guys have to play Wolverine and come on, but Masha talk about it. You volunteered because you were so hyped because you wanted to play this, which I guess can't be. - That's kind of bullshit. - Yeah, don't play out of the way in there. - That's not what happened. - So what happened here? So there's not one person on Earth that loves big culling bird. - Exactly. - We will always have, we're gonna hang out with you then. But we will always have our night time walk in Central Park, me and Ben. Everybody lives in Central Park. - Great memories. - Yeah. - What was, where were they building in Central Park? Whatever, who cares? Who was building something in Central Park? For somebody's not know why. - We were building our relationship. Like what happened was we wanted the coach to the game. You're gonna be honest with the audience, right? - Oh, I see what's happening here. - We wanted the coach to the game. - Okay, okay. - We wanted the coach to play the Wolverine game. - We wanted to play the game. - I didn't, I was, I didn't, by the way, ended up buying on accident anyway. - Oh no. - Yes, so I got to try to get a return. I ended up buying the game on accident anyway. - That's hilarious. - So we wanted the coach to the game and big culling bird. Said what, Jamie? - He was like, listen, y'all can get the coach to the game. I need a coach to the game. You gotta work. You gotta come on, buddy. - Is that true? - Yeah, that's exactly true. - You gotta work for this though. - These are free lunches. - No free skis around here. - This was all through our June as an intermediary. I hear the Midnight Boys want codes for Wolverine. And you know, we had already gotten a few codes for Wolverine 'cause we were gonna cover it on Bud Mesh. And I can't be going back to the well and asking for more free codes if we're not gonna get some more coverage out this season with police. So I'm assuming you're making this anymore. All you can ask for is free codes now. - Hey, they still are. - For now, for a few more years, it's true. - Okay, all right, fair enough. So you wanted to play it. You didn't necessarily want to podcast about it. And then you were pressed into service. - Hey, I don't do that. - I always want to podcast with big culling bird. Always, I just like the fact that in this particular fact it was like, you gonna shake ass with him, coach. Like, you gotta heard it. - If you want them codes, we're gonna have to slip a dollar in the G string. So, look, once I finally upped out 'cause I'm like, how do you do the code and stuff like that? Like, once I finally upped out. - Every time, every time I give you a coach for a game, I get a text, how do you work it? - How do you, how do you put this in? 'Cause I always go to the store. Like, and then you like, how do you, how do you work it? - That's where you go. I sent you the instructions. - Redeen code. - Redeen code. - Redeen code. - Yeah. - You got that stuff. - Madden out of me. - Madden, college football out of me. - Didn't demand podcasts in return for those. - You did not. - No, that was a freebie. - You did not. I think we did do the first possible one. - We did do one, we did do one. - It's just like a deal in the first hit's free. - Exactly, exactly. Get you hooked on these codes. They can deal in our codes, bro. I will say that like, do you know how I know that this game was fun for at least me? 'Cause I've told you guys this before, I used to be a game taper. You guys remember that? - Oh wow. - You guys this? - Really. - So my first job in LA working at Cybernet to television show was as a game taper. So I would tape games, the gameplay of the game, and then the cutscenes of the game to go into the reviews that we would do on Cybernet. With a game that's this rich, you could probably only play this game for about 10 minutes and get everything you needed for your review. 'Cause you're gonna get all your cinematics. You're gonna get enough definitions of the gameplay and you're out. So when I have to play games for like a review or for purpose, it's kind of almost like reflexive for me to just play what I need to play and then get out. I have not done that with this. I've played this, I'm into it, hanging out with Gene Gray, having fun. I have played this game just to complete this adventure. - So this is sort of the summer of Gene Gray. I guess this is her second major Marvel media appearance. And you haven't fully finished this thing yet and obviously the game's not out yet for the general public. You know, people who haven't hit me up for codes potentially to appear on a podcast. And so we won't give away full story spoilers or anything along those lines, but I do wanna get your guys thoughts on this depiction of Logan and Gene and just the characterization that we're going for here. 'Cause Logan has been so many things. He has been so many kinds of characters in so many genres over the decades. Do you feel like this is a distinctive take on Logan? This is Insomniacs Wolverine? Or do you feel like it's just kind of a collection of various depictions of Wolverine that we've seen before? Does this stand out for you? Or is it just sort of let's put a bunch of elements of Wolverine in a big blender? And this is what we get. I don't know. It feels to me as if there's like this isn't something like in look and feel it feels like the Wolverine. We've always known for the Wolverine that we've seen in media. Not particularly like Hugh Jackman, Hugh Jackman was Wolverine per se, but if you grew up like me watching like X-Men in the 90s and Wolverine in the X-Men and X-Men evolution, it kind of feels like that type of Wolverine, right? But it regards to like, he is so nice in this game. Yeah, if you're not a reaver. Yeah, he's so kind and so thoughtful in a way that I've never known my Wolverine to be, you know what I mean? Like to like to saber tooth, to mystique, loves Walter. That's the big homie for him. That's the big dog, you know what I'm saying? And so for me, I'm like, man, normally, especially like with saber tooth, I'm like, yeah, man, where's the beef? Where's the, hey, it feels like at least where I'm at in the game, they, they froze. They like, you know, they have their like scuffles, but the end of the day, man, it's all about saving millions. I'm like, man, I have never ever seen you for react like this before. I like that though. I think that there's a, there's an undercurrent of tragedy that exists within Logan as a character that I've really, really enjoyed because he's a person that's lived on this earth for so long and has endured so much and has been like witnessed so many like terrible things that he's kind of become this like in certain cases, in examples of the character, like a feral representation of humanity. And for all of the great work that that Hugh Jackman did in his like portrayal of the character, I think that this is a bit more of a, as Joey said, like a sweeter and a bit more of an affectionate Wolverine where we get to see a lot of the things that is far beyond the feral beast that we know him as. And the comics have like genuinely tapped into this a bit more. But I, I love the portrayal of this. I think that the actor that plays him, the, the name escapes me at the moment, but I think he's doing a bang up job. Liam McIntyre. He's really, really good. He's got the grunts down. Really, really great. And I think that the strength of this is in that performance. And I think that Insomniac knew that because when it comes time to actually displaying elements of the story, I think they have a very good handle on that. Those characters are very well-trodden at this point in popular culture. And to see something like this in a bit more of a new and interesting skin, it's very refreshing. I think that, I think for me, can I say something? I'll say something right now being if that's okay on the podcast, if that's fine. So the trick that these games always have to continue with is what they just said, which even in the Spider-Man game, there's all kinds of stuff that's like, that's not, that's not how that goes. But they have to do something that's very familiar, but then also plays with the lower a little bit. I will say to the boys this point and to my point as well, there is a walkingness that kind of exists in this where you just see mystique Wolverine and Sabretooth and Mr. Sinister all in the same team together and you go, yeah, and it's not, and it's just because it's like, you know, it's one thing to do, like, but you go, I never seen, you know, with that kind of deal, you know, and it's not, it doesn't take you out of it, but it does take an extra tick for you to get into it. It's just kind of, it's odd. It's like, it looks a little, what it really does is at the very beginning of it, it kind of makes the game feel like a little off-brand. There's an air contradiction to that because like, we've seen millions of different team ups and millions of different things that all of these characters have done. Like, Alpha Flight alone is like the rag, that's an off-brand off-brand. That's they all team. Exactly. But it doesn't even make that much sense at the end of the day. All of this is made up, but to know that these characters in this combination, in this specific combination that we would bristle against, like, I felt like a dick being like, well, this isn't how it would happen. Really. I think to Vance Point though, is that the game literally opens with Logan being Pharaoh and Nathaniel XS, Jesus Christ, XS is the one who finds him. And you're like, if you know comics, if you read, if you know these things, you're like, that's Mr. Sinister. We know who that is. We know who that is. That's not going to end well. Yeah, right. And so you kind of like, you spend the whole game just like, all right, cool. When is he going to, when's he going to turn to Mr. Sinister? Like, do we know this? Yeah. Right. So, to Vance Point, you just like, you're already already there. You're like, why is Mr. Sinister doing this? Like, it's just like, it's just something that because we know this Lord so well, we know this story so well, it just kind of feels like a little, huh, it's a little weird. And if this was the second game, that would be one thing, but it's the first game. So if this was the second, if this was Wolverine 2 and the search for Sinister, then that would be, but this is the first game. So you see them in Gene Gray and she got to let the jacket. It's like, it's like, it is a little bit like, okay, well, they got their own thing going. So I'm fucking with it. Yeah, no, I know what you mean, because I mean, obviously there's so many retcons in every medium. There's so many versions of Wolverine that you're just kind of taking them up the shelf and I'm doing this with him this time, and then I'll put them back in someone else's show. Yeah, that was actually, I think a Jason conception idea. It's all just like action figures and each storyteller takes them off the shelf, does something different with them, put some back with someone else. Yeah, what do you think he said? I thought he said taking it up the shelf. I don't know what the hell. Tell me my bad. Jason didn't say that. That's a little bit different. But I think, you know, there are comic spans of Wolverine who don't like what the movies did with Wolverine and with the love triangle and everything or the way Scott was represented or in this game, there just is no Scott, right? There's a will they or won't they with Logan and Gene, but there's no live love triangle here whatsoever. There's always will they won't they? Every time we think that they will, something explicit. It's more of a like medium. Just as as they're about to lock lips. That's when you know that that's when the Sentinel's about to drop right behind them or something. Yeah, it's frustrating for them. They keep getting cock blocked by by Mr. sinister and whoever else. But I was thinking about this because Star Wars games at least these days, they're canon. They're canon the way that the TV shows or the movies if they make movies are canon. They have the Lucasfilm lower experts and all the rest of it. And so it feels like it's of a piece. It's a unified universe for better or worse. And sometimes that can be frustrating because it's just like I just want to play with these characters and go on some fun adventure and not have to be bound by the events of the Star Wars story. Whereas the Marvel video games, they're just going off in all different directions. And it's a completely different continuity. And and you do get some of that off brand. Just like when you play the Guardians of the Galaxy game or Marvel's Midnight Suns. Even if those are games. Yeah, it's like oh man. It's not all right. It's like you know, these are not the art of you characters. These are not the actors I know. Yeah, it's great. It takes some time to get used to. It's like these are different versions. And maybe they're not exactly lesser versions, but they seem like that because they're a lot less prominent. So you are kind of dealing with that here. It's just yet another version of Wolverine. And this is a very different gene gray from the brand new day gene gray, obviously. So you're constantly having to reset yourself. But it's like back to zero, back to square one. Okay, who is this Wolverine? He's a little bit of this and a little bit of that. And I was wondering, I wanted to ask you guys whether you think that Wolverine is interesting as a solo act, as a leading man, not as part of an ensemble. Because here, okay, he's technically he's a former member of team X. And then he's kind of quasi rejoining a little bit. But mostly he's out on his own with the occasional NPC allies backing him up. So Wolverine as a leading man as a solo act, and not in a genre story, you know, not like the Logan neo-Western or not like Samurai Logan, or like Noir Logan or Spy Logan, you know, all the different versions of him we've seen. But just sort of straight ahead action, Wolverine, can that kind of story be interesting or does it just evolve into I'm going to rip some guys apart with my class for a long time? I mean, I think it's a bit of a catch 22 because all of those iterations of Logan that you mentioned before are the stories that make him interesting. And all of that is again, well-trodden and like well-established in the lore of these comics fans that are like like us, like we know all of that stuff. And as much as this game is trying to at its best, like just touch on them, just to like to give a little bit of fan service or homage to the things that we know and love, it kind of like, and this is another thing that like is disappointing about the game, it really doesn't make that much of a stretch because you have all of these great suits that are available to you to like craft and find that are like oh, is to great appearances that he's had in comic books. But it doesn't exactly like make any sort of, like, in story reason for him to be wearing those things, they're just things that he wears. And that's fine. But ultimately, I think the overarching point of this story is that this is a world before mutants really were worldwide and known. This is a thing that is like kind of an origin of an origin, not only just of X-Men, but of kind of Wolverine's agency in the fight against mutant oppression. And I think that's kind of softened in this story. But I think overall, it's still fun. You're still a guy that's got knives on his fists that are killing dudes left and right. So I like, I think, I think that it's fine. I think that I'm not offended by it, but it's, it's still soft. I keep it be with you boss. I love Wolverine. I think Wolverine is a great character. It's fun. Exciting. I need everybody to tame. It's not like nobody doesn't know what the X-Men are now. And if this game literally started in the X-Mansion, with every mutant we've ever seen and it's just Wolverine walking through that school, going on missions, we have been happy. No, you can't. You can't. It doesn't know. Hell no. No, no. So how about this? The answer is no. That, that's what you say would work see. But what's your, but what, but this right here, no, nigga, no, no, no. So like, what, what, actually, join me go ahead. I don't, I like, just like, I don't want to, yeah, no, no, no. But like, I'm thinking about like, you mentioned the movies, Ben, and I like the second Wolverine joy. Where you go to Japan and he's doing all ring. I like that one. People don't really rock. Yeah, like that. I like the Wolverine, the movie that Wolverine is cool. But it is him and Famke Jensen show up as an apparition. Yeah, every like 30 minutes. And that's it, right? And then you get Silver Samurai, if you locked in, you're like, oh, that's just something. What if you're not, if you just walk in, be like, man, it's a movie and you like, I don't know none of these people. Like, that dude, I see him from somewhere. I know him from another movie. But these are not the X-Men I'm messing with. People don't really like get attached to that. That's why like, as much I like the movie, people don't really like, you don't rate that movie because it's not, doesn't have those characters. To, yeah, I just think that if you got to make a Wolverine movie, you got to throw, you got to throw us a bomb, man. You got to put the homies in there. They put Jean Grey in there. That's cool. We know, we love Jean Grey, not a mystique, obviously. But there's no, there's no world where you make a Wolverine movie or a Wolverine video game. And it's just Wolverine all the time. I'm sorry. I'm not that woke. I'm sorry. Let me say this. So I agree with everybody. But I also disagree slightly. Okay, so look, this is the point. I agree with you. Okay. I agree. The thing is you have to, we all, we hit on it. You have to give Wolverine a world. The thing that makes the Spider-Man game so awesome is that you're in Spider-Man's world. Like those, a lot of those villains in that game are off-marrying, like, oh, it's symbiot people. Oh, it's guys that like are lighting everything on fire, the fire people. It's like, you know, but you're in Manhattan. You're in the world that Spider-Man's in. So that world is interesting. Like you can swing around and jump off the Empire State Building. Like, you always have the problems that Spider-Man has. Like, oh, my God, you put the bus out and then you got to take the bus, the person out the bus and like take him to safety. All that you feel as Spider-Man. Wolverine doesn't really have a world because he's a nomad, right? So he doesn't have a world. So in universe, there's no world for you. Wolverine. He's a nomad. That's why if this same game was Wolverine and it was set in samurai, Japan, it would be more interesting. Like, that's why if you took the game and set it in the X-Men world, a world that we know finite, hey, all the X-Men are on a battle. Wolverine gets separated from them. We fight against the loud-nosed cyclops gets taken over and Wolverine got to find it would be more interesting. And Wolverine, the character himself, is a nomad. The character is written that way. So now you have to establish a world that you don't know, which means that narratively that world has to be really, really, really interesting. It would have to be because you're doing because you're charting new ground. And this one is fine. But him by himself, like charting a new Wolverine chapter. Nah, nah, man. Yeah, man, we'll just be able to do it. I'm like, you know what I'm saying? Like, you know what I'm saying? And so like, in that regard, all the other characters that we're talking about, like any of this stuff, all those other characters, they have finite, like sandboxes that they play in. And part of the charm of those characters is those sandboxes. Wolverine is not even a man out of a sandbox. He's a man out of time. So that's like a difficult thing to kind of play with. And I think the game took the path of most resistance. And it wasn't a home run. It doesn't suck. Yes, it wasn't. Yeah. Yeah. And it's, I mean, it's a globe-trotting game. You're going around the world. You're in Japan. You're in Madreport. You're in British Columbia. My ancestral home of Vancouver. But you're not doing much different depending on where you are in the world. It's just the level design is pretty similar. You're fighting some of the same enemies regardless. It's just, you know, go in a room, tear some people apart, and then go to the next room where you tear some more people apart. And then occasionally you use a motorcycle for a few minutes. That was fun. That was fun. That was fun though. Yeah. And people's tires up and all of that. That's when I felt like the Wolverine. Yeah. So I'd like a little more variety like that, right? And that's kind of what we're getting at. It's like when you get these glimpses of the different Wolverines, but then it's just the base sort of generic Wolverine for the most part, except for the sensitivity, which you were mentioning. So it is an attempt to sort of, you know, okay, he's angry. And there's a rage meter. And, and you're clawing people, but also he feels bad about that. And he's, you know, he's obviously, he's Wolverine. He's dealing with some psychological trauma and he's forgotten his past and all the rest of it. Those are just staples of the character. But for one thing, it's, it's kind of the trope with these first party Sony games where you have the tortured protagonist who's very violent, but feels conflicted about it. So I think people are just gonna just yeah, well, then I'm sorry, you shouldn't have made a Wolverine game because that's literally who he is. Well, that's what I keep wondering. Just are the problems with Marvel's Wolverine with the game or with Wolverine himself, because you can't really make a Wolverine game that is anything other than that exactly. But the way that they do it just feels so familiar that we've seen with so many games, whether it's God of War or Soros or Last of Us or Ghost of Yotay or whatever it is. It's just kind of that same sad dark character who feels bad about being bad. And the reason why I think it's tough to tell a cohesive story in video games that's structured like that is because the game is telling you to kill people. Cons, that's, that's the game here is kill people. And then the cutscenes, it's like, well, what have I done? I got it. I went, I let myself go. You know, there are these moments where Wolverine like he blacks out, right? He's just like in his animalistic rage and then he comes back and he looks around and there's his bodies through and everywhere. And he's like, oh, I relapsed basically. But that's that's why you're doing the entire game. And that's what the game encourages you to do. And you know, are you supposed to feel guilty about that or complicit or something? Not really. It's the, you know, you're just killing generic cyborgs and robots or whatever. And so- Revers, yeah. Yeah, it's tough to tell that story where it's just like he's sensitive, he's conflicted. He wants to reform and be a new Wolverine. But then the game just by its nature forces you to keep clawing people apart. That's just, that's what it is. So yeah. Well, to that criticism, I would say the people that like have also tried it against that, like the worst phrase in like game criticism that I can remember, which is ludonarrative dissonance, where it's where you have a character who mows down hundreds of people and feels like nothing. Like if you've ever played an uncharted game where Nathan Drake is just killing untold scores of mercenaries. And then he's like, well, we're out of fun little adventure. And he's like, well, you're a mass murderer. Uh, yeah, to have a game that even lightly interrogates that can be refreshing and like can be a part of the like tragedy of the character of Logan. I think that he needs to actually have some sort of resolution in that when it comes to like the end of this story. And we don't get that obviously. But I think that like there can be a balance between those two because I think the idea in games where you're obviously like you have the power fantasy of getting to kill, uh, dozens of people and have all of these this power and stuff like that while also reckoning with it can be done. But you can really appreciate how much of a miracle it is when it's done well versus saying this game where it's not done that well. There hasn't really been a great Wolverine game, which is part of why I'm thinking of this before this one. There hadn't been one for more than 15 years. And there'd been really only a handful of, I mean, standalone Wolverine games. Obviously, he's been on some games. Man origins. Next men games. Right. So that was one, right? In 2009. Pretty good. Pretty good. I think this game is also pretty good. But I don't know that either of them is great. Now that was that was a movie tie-in game. A lot of the the old Wolverine games were movie tie-in games going back to NES or whatever. And often movie tie-in. game weren't good. And that was one of the better ones, but had a similar reception to this one. Was sort of similarly structured in a lot of, you know, it had its range meter, right? Like, it was the same sort of, you know, there was team X in that game too. And so maybe that's the ceiling for a Wolverine game is just, okay, this is pretty good action. And it's not overly long. And, uh, and this is who he is. And so maybe Wolverine is just miscast as sort of a prestige, award-bait game of the year character. I don't know that that he's built for that. So in video games, video games are at least, in my opinion, not necessarily about cool, right? Like Wolverine is cool. The thing that makes you want Wolverine around in your comic book is that he destabilizes things like he says cool shit, he does cool shit. Like something they go, hey, you know, we're going to take this person alive and Wolverine goes, nope, they're dead. And you go, oh my god. And also like his vulnerability, the fact that he's not as powerful as some of the other characters in the Marvel universe is another thing that makes Wolverine cool. He's just incredibly durable. You just he's un, he's unkillable, but he's like not the A number one front line of any huge, huge, huge defense mechanism type thing because like he doesn't have cosmic powers. Yeah. And he bleeds. It's like poor little leech says, are you a superhero? And he says not kid, I'm Wolverine. You can bring him to the point of death repeatedly. Yeah. But it doesn't matter that he's not that Wolverine is going to see onslaught and he's going to unsheath his claws and he's going to give it his best shot. Those are all the things that make a character really cool in the comic books, but like, that don't really what I, you know, in the video game, that's every video game character. What I'm saying is like cool, cool video game characters, but they have to have to do cool stuff. So I do think that this game kind of got preoccupied with some of the least cool video game aspects of Wolverine's character. There are things in the game to me that like he could be doing more stuff. There's more stuff that he could do. There's more actual feats and other things that Wolverine could do more ways they could use him. Like for example, the motorcycle stuff is so cool because that's high octane Wolverine type action. But it's really a game for people who just want to like see Wolverine cut people up and like, be bloody. Wolverine always cuts people up and there's no blood. We don't ever see blood. If you had that comment after X2 X-Men United, you don't have that no more. You got all the blood you want. And that's kind of the star of the show here. But once again, hey, this seems negative. Fuck it. I like the game. Yeah. I'm having fun. Now you hate it or something like you hate it. I jump over and I cut somebody and I cut them up. And then I like I dodge and then I stealth and then I ride the motorbike and then I'm walking through the weeds and they can't see me. I like the game. I'm having fun. Yeah. I think that the most successful comic book characters or superheroes in video games. Well, it's Spider-Man and Batman, right? Who are also just the two most popular and successful characters anyway. But I think they succeed so much in video games. There have been so many good Spider-Man standalone games or Spider-Man. Sorry. I know it's not Spider-Man. It's you. But that works because just the web slinging alone is the web slinging alone is so much fun. Right. I mean, that's that gets you know, you could just do that all day. And the combat is so very because Batman and Spider-Man they can be airborne. They can web sling. They can glide. They got gadgets. Yeah. They've got gadgets. They can do the hand to hand and the complex combos and everything. They can fight in the air. They can fight on the ground. Whereas other characters are more limited, you know, there are really almost no Superman games, right? There's the notoriously terrible Superman 64 game. They barely haven't dared to make one because it's tough to make a flying character game because it's like, well, how do you limit them? Or Superman is you know, indestructible. What are you gonna just have kryptonite around every corner? Well, it's just it's hard to to build a Superman game. And with Wolverine, it's it's not as hard, but it's still you're constrained. You're limited, right? Even though this Wolverine he's pretty agile. He's pretty mobile. He's leaping around. It's fun to jump with him. He can claw up walls and stuff. But compared to say Spider-Man, you know, he's ground bound street level. And he's just clawing people up close. You know, the closest they get to a ranged attack is like, you know, eventually you unlock sort of this thing where you can do like an energy burst from a far. But it's it's not really a core focus of the combat. So it's just up close and personal. And that's almost bound to get repetitive. You know, it's like, you unlock a lot of powers and abilities and special skills and stuff as you go. And I fully leveled up the character. I went beyond that because they're all these like boxes of experience points. And I kept this kind of run for no reason really. For no reason, very video gamey. And then I maxed out my level and I was like still leveling at the end of the game and getting nothing for it. But at the end, I was still doing the basic just like spam the square button and press parry to get through most of the encounters. You know, and there are only so many Revers and Sentinels to fight, right? And so and even the boss fights are kind of like more of the same, just a little longer and harder. So I don't know, like maybe the variety, I think, is the issue. Not that it's that long a game. It's, you know, 15-ish hours maybe on a typical playthrough. But before I got to the end of it, I was I was ready for it to be over. Now, I think you hit the nail on the head with probably at least to me the worst the worst aspect of the game is the combat. It's really just a match X simulator or sorry, max square simulator. That's that's really it. You know, till your point about Batman and Spider-Man, you can mix gadgets in there. You can get in the air, you know, like what are my favorite combos to do in Spider-Man? It's the whole square. You punch them in the air. You swing into them, right? Yes. And like that's a lot of fun. You can be people up in the air. That's cool. And this game, you're really like you just you'd be a max square, you dodge, you parry. And that's that's kind of it. You have the L2, you know, X square, all that stuff, but ultimately you just spend a lot of time square, square, square, square, square, square, square, triangle for healing points square, square, square, square, square, square, roll, dodge, square, square, square, square. It's a lot of that. It got me thinking a lot because like if I was Wolverine and I was like a constantly health regenerating killing machine with knives on my fists, I would probably just figure out like three really good fighting moves and then just do that for the rest of my life. Like I would just like step step uppercut works well and works for it works on everybody works on me. And that's kind of what this game is. It's like all right, you got three moves. It works on everybody. And the progression system, like you said, in the combat, it really is trying to do its best like God of War 2018 impression where you have this like broad skill tree of different evolving both techniques and buffs and things in the game that are supposed to help you where you're like, okay, like if you're sprinting and blocking like it generates rage more and you're supposed to feel that difference when you get that experience. But I never really felt any actual progression as I played. Sure, I got a different fight move. I got the ability to like need somebody in the face. But after I used it, I'm like, okay, well, I'm kind of just back to using the same moveset that I've normally done. And I think that's a that's a tough sweet spot to make because the progression in like they like we've set Spider-Man and Batman and all of these other things like there's those are notable progressions both in the game and kind of in the story because like it's it's what makes Metroidvania so popular as a genre because that level of progression changes the aspect of the game going forward. And this doesn't really change itself. It's more so just you get a couple of new shiny things along the way. Also with him though is that the reality of the character is that like we wouldn't be concerned with any of these guys that he's fighting because they can't kill him. And so like this game has that I mean they can't kill them. They killed me a lot. I know I know but like so the game has to do enough to make all of this stuff to make you feel a sense of danger in being somebody that legitimately all of those guys can grab them by each of his arms and pull them apart and he would just like sit there and regenerate. So like it it I personally think that even though the combat is repetitive I think the attack patterns from the enemies are not. So I think you feel what it means to be Wolverine because you're cutting somebody up. Somebody's aiming at you from behind so then you have to dodge that. Come back hit that guy. Come back to the guy that you were killing. Then if you get overwhelmed do one of the special moves. So the game does a good job even though the combat is it's pretty basic of making you feel overwhelmed by your foes. So you have to mix up not the way that you're striking the button but the strategies that you use to get out of those situations. How much do you stalk someone and then once you killed a couple of people with the stocking. Can you didn't go ahead up with the faith? Yeah, that's a good point because in a lot of video games, you're surrounded by a ring of henchmen and then they do the classic thing where they attack you one at a time and the rest of them just stand around watching. Here, they do team up on you. They do, they do pile on and it's still not enough because Wolverine's unstoppable, but it at least does give you something to think about and you have people shooting you from afar while other people are up close kicking you or punching you. So yeah, there is a lot to juggle. I think that's that's a good distinction. I think, you know, the depiction of Wolverine I like because obviously we've seen a lot of different visual Wolverines as well and there were people who thought when Hugh Jackman was cast, he's too hot to be Wolverine and he's too tall to be Wolverine and this is not cigar-chomping comics, Logan. And and this is this is sort of a hybrid, right? It's kind of a tweener from a hotness standpoint. He's still pretty pretty good-looking, I'd say. And Liam McIntyre himself six with three, but yeah, exactly, but but they made him a short king for this game. He's very hairy all over and and I do like the the kind of buddy duo of Logan and and saber tooth just super tall, super short, just wreaking havoc together. So I I do like that that even though you are just overpowered for much of the game, at least you're you're looking up at everyone that you're talking to in the cutscenes gene gray included. So that that part at least was kind of comic accurate and cool, I think. And you know, it helps because if this was giant Wolverine who also had these oversized, outsized powers, then that might be too much. But you know, I think that like a lot of the criticism of this game, it's kind of become this avatar of everything that people are tired of with triple A big budget games. And you know, it's a lot of the handholding that Steve alluded to. Yellow paint gamers rise up. In this case, white paint, but yeah, you know, anything anything you can climb on, it's going to signal that to you. Fart gas is a big talking point. People are talking about the fart gas, which is, you know, whenever you're tracking someone, there's just a line of the the scent that is hanging in the air and you just follow that to them. And again, a lot of this makes sense for the character because Wolverine like has incredible powers of smell and you can track people down, but that is also such a gaming convention. Or yeah, like just the invisible walls or just the you can walk this way, but not all the way that way, or here's a walk in talk segment where we're going to slow it down and you can't sprint anymore, because we want you to look over here and interact with this item and see this Easter egg or whatever, just a lot of that stuff. It's like, I don't know if you guys have seen the the triple A Mario memes, where it's like put Mario, you know, Unreal Engine triple A game and and someone's constantly talking in your ear and you're constantly getting tips and hints and pop-ups to say, press this button and go over there. And it's not that hard a game to begin with and it does really feel like, all right, just let me just let me cook here a little bit, you know, you don't need to keep pointing me this way or that. I got I got something to say, man, like legitimately, I feel like you'll take all the help. Like the white paint and the glowing stuff and all that. I feel like we've lost the plot completely on that, right? As criticizing it or as far as putting any game as both. Okay, right? Because there is a level of, yeah, we like to figure things out, right? I remember when I was playing the first, the first Calcastas game. And I didn't know where I was going completely lost. And on the on the first planet, I was like, where do I go? How do I do these things? Bob, Bob, Bob. Games over the last like, even like 20 years or so, has become a thing for everybody, right? It used to be, man, you had to spend all this money to get this console, man. And if you didn't know what you was doing, you was cooked, right? You had the game shark thing, you had the cheat code thing that you were putting in like 18 different bank accounts. But at the end of the day, man, it used to be this like singular thing for like a group of people. Now it's now it's for everybody, right? And for some people, they, they might need a little white paint, right? That might need a little sniff line, right? The thing is, and the thing, and this is where I think people like completely like just like going over the heads. There's a reason why there's it's yellow paint in every game, right? Because we know what that means. Yes. I know if there's white paint on that or yellow paint on that, I can jump on that, right? I know if there's a sniff line there, I need to go somewhere, right? First of all, and this is like super important. You can turn that stuff off in a lot of games. You can turn off some of it. Yeah, you, I don't think you can turn off the fart gas at least currently. I bet you that right now. I bet you they are. You can turn off like hints. You can turn off, you know, the arrows that will tell you go here in some cases. So a lot of that is true. It's on by default, but you can strip some of it out. It's true though. Like when you talk to people who make games, sometimes they weigh in on these debates about the yellow paint, and they say like, we tried taking out the yellow paint and no one knew where to go, you know, so we all think like, oh, we've played enough games. We understand. But sometimes you need that kind of heavy handed sign thing. I need it. The games I grew up on with sides growless. Yeah, I had no choice but to get through shit. Then you started playing all the other games. The thing I hate it, boy, I used to hate this. Halo was one of the first games that was truly intuitive for me. So like you, when you were playing through the adventure on Halo, you could just feel where you needed to go. Yeah, right? That's the idea. Yeah. Yeah. Like you just like when Halo, which is you were playing the game, I was like, oh, I think I need to go there. And then like later on, we thought we were psyched. But then later on, the game makers put out little things and it'd be like, hey, man, this area is brighter. This area is this like we're so subtle. You don't even notice it. Yeah. Yeah, we're pulling you like where you need to go. But the one thing I tell you one thing that kills my experience with a game, it kills my experience in a game. If I spend five or 10 minutes somewhere and I can't figure out where to go. Right. Yeah. I got too much of a shit I can do. I'm saying it used to be 10 15 years ago, like, you know, or even longer, you there and you connected to the game. Now I'm just letting y'all know that's been five minutes. I can't figure out where to go. It's a lot of shit I could be doing. Right. Yeah. I could turn on like other games. I could go on social media. I could fucking go to the movies. I could do like is a lot of stuff competing for attention right now. So I think some of that stuff, the hardcore gamers complain about. But for some of the people that are walking into these games a little bit more like not neo fights the game, but less into the world. Yeah, they need that or else they gonna pick something else up. Right. And that's ultimately what this game is supposed to be. It's a four quadrant. We all love Wolverine. Here's a game where you get to be Wolverine. And that's going to bring in a lot more people like it's probably not going to be a system seller. But for anybody who's even marginally interested in being Wolverine in a video game, that's going to get their attention. And if they're not into the games like that much. Yeah, that's going to help them. But people's eye are at this is so stupid. No, it is. It is. People are so mad that somebody else might need help in a video game and that the developers of that game might put things in the game to help them play the game. To both of you guys's points like, yeah, this is supposed to be something that people come to and they play and they enjoy and they're not thinking about like, man, I don't know where to go. Man, if only there was something that could tell me which ledge I need to go on or where I needed to be, it just feels like really weird and like insensitive. Not like a walkway, but just like, well, man, let people. I feel like a lot of the criticism that comes from gaming is that they deal in absolute. If something isn't an immaculately designed 10 out of 10, oh my God, all of these things worked in perfect harmony and are exactly where they're supposed to be. Anything less of that sucks. And the like, I think the most skating review that I saw of this game is that like this game is designed to assume that the player is perilously stupid and that every single thing is telegraphed to you and told you what to do. And I'm like, you know what? There's nothing wrong with telling the player what to do in a more overt way than what we're used to. Also, uh, the dodge is like, generally, people, you are kind of stupid. Let's be honest. Like in like in general, but it's like the war general design is basically giving somebody a problem that you want to solve in a certain way and giving and making them think that it's there. I don't I worked, uh, my first job in college. I did social for the affiliate department and we put our graphics and posts about like, yo, the game is here at this time, uh, Kelly to see it there. And people be like, where's the game, man? What time is the game under the tweet that we told you where it was and what time it was like, it's just like people I like that. And so if you want to build a game to Vance point, that people continue to play where the like, man, I didn't, I don't know where this thing is. I'm gonna turn this off. I'm gonna go, I'm gonna go to the theater watch coyote for exactly, you know what I mean? Like it just doesn't make any sense for the developers to not do that. And so if people to get like, not like regular upset like up in arms like a kid believe that they would help these people play these games right? It's like, it's one of the dumbest these things have ever seen people be upset about? - I think there is a gatekeeping aspect to that. There's a little bit of elitist. I don't need this. If you need this, you're a filthy casual or something. There's definitely something to that. I do think you could take it a tad too far. It's not just the hand holding. It's also just some of the other conventions, like the, okay, it makes perfect sense that Wolverine is traumatized and he has these hidden memories, he's recaptured. But then you turn it into a literal, physical nightmare door that you go in and you follow this route that takes you to the door and then you claw away the bad memories and then you get a little slumber voiceover. It's not slumber voiceover. - It's 65 and the mortals are going down. - I saw him hold on, man, hold on. - I saw him. - Because you're not wrong. I think that's a little different though. There's a little different. - That is a little bit different. - It's a little different. - Yes, because the problem with those in particular is again, it's a linear game. So there's not a lot of downtime in between the missions of the surface. You're always on your way to do something. You're always on your way to go somewhere. If I fell as ladies, whoever is developing the game. If I'm on the way to it, if I'm in a mission, I don't need a nightmare to try to show up, right? - It's more like a strategy of the thing. Like, oh my God, we have to rescue these mutants. Times of the essence, oh, wait a minute. I got to deal with my trouble there. - I got to deal with a nightmare door right now. Nah. Now if I'm like, if I'm like, oh, I got to go find jeans. - I got to do it. - Which makes much for me. - And the nightmare, if I got to go, man, we will talk about that. Give me one second. If I'm on my way to find Jean and MagiPoor, and then a nightmare door shows up, I'm like, okay, cool. But if I'm like, actively in a mission, killing rivers, whatever, and then going to the next spot, and then a nightmare door shows up, I'm like, whatever, cool. Speaking of which, the trials in the nightmares, okay. So they have the fighting ones, right? Like, that makes a lot of sense. I get it. The traversal ones. - Parkour? - No. - But I know people who work really hard. I really like this game, guys. I really do. I just want to preface, I'll say. Just one of the worst things I've ever been a part of in my entire life, because all you do is hold. - R2? - R2 and forward. - And forward. - Yeah, to sprint and forward on the fun thing. - And you jump occasionally. - That's it. - That's it. It's, I've been. I am one of the worst platformers you will ever see. I am not a good platformer game. - Platinum act every time. - At all. - I got adamantium on my first try. That was like, whoa. That's never less a minute. In Spider-Man 2, in the second Spider-Man, there's a clip of me. I posted this on Instagram, or on Twitter. The first, or the second Spider-Man game, the first chasing with the. Whatever the flying things were in the Spider-Man game, it's only an hour to complete that one, because I just couldn't figure it out. I just couldn't, the gliding was terrible for me. It was bad, it was awful. Isaiah Blakely and Kai Grady make fun of me every time they see me, they're like, "Yo, remember, Jimmy?" When you took an hour to do those Craven drones, hilarious, you're an idiot. This game, the Nightmare Traverse, or I'm just pressing X, I'm pressing Slime, boom, boom, boom. Under a 41 seconds, for a 45 second thing, I'm like, "Yo, I am not good at this. This is one of my respawns. I should not be planning this off the rip." - Yeah. - It's my plan. Which, the only frustrating thing about me is that yes to everything that Joey said, the one biggest thing is the second time I was doing this, I'm like, why isn't this the danger room? Why aren't I just doing this in the X Mansion? Why aren't we like, that actually broke me, 'cause I'm like, this is exactly what the danger room should be. This is exactly what the extra stuff of a game that I actually wanted to kind of be, and like, again, I hate being like the thing where I'm like, I'm still having fun, but like, game, you knew exactly what you could have done, and you didn't do it. - I'm not like, the story's that you're getting through the nightmare trials, you know? - Jesus Christ. - He was out there, the boomer is going to come in. He went back to Japan, it's like, oh, that's cool. - Yeah, I think if the hand-holding is sort of, is it detracting from the fun of the game in that if the game is about puzzle solving and you're suggesting the solution to the puzzle before I have a chance to figure it out on my own, and get that feeling of accomplishment, then you're shooting yourself in the foot. Now, if this were a detective Logan game where it's really about following clues and tracking people down, and you've got fart gas pointing you to where the solution is, that's silly. If it's a game where really it's about getting from one combat encounter to the next, and it's just, do I want to wander around for a while or do I want to follow the trail that tells me where to go? You could say, maybe it's for the best that you just get to the next combat encounter. Then I think it becomes, well, is the combat good enough to be the centerpiece and to be the hook? 'Cause if you're taking out any puzzle solving or traversal that's as interesting as, say, in the Spider-Man games, then the combat really has to be the star and has to be enough to carry the experience. And I think it wears thin eventually just because of how limited the move set is and the enemy is and just how repetitive it tends to get. But I'm with you. I think you want a big tent for a game like this that it aspires to be a mainstream success. Can you take that too far? I think, yes, in some ways. But that's not my main quibble with the game. I guess I'm more about just the structure of the game, then sort of the trappings, the cosmetic stuff, the tips and hints and all the rest. But the lack of X mentioned, the lack of X-Men. In some of the explanation for that is, we didn't want to skip to X-Men. We didn't want the mutants to have a safe space. And to be, you know, they did not say that word. That is not a direct quote. They did not say those words. OK, I'm paraphrasing. I'm like, if you say, if they said that, but they didn't, you know, you're at a point in the story here where mutants are not widely known in the world. People do not know that mutants exists, right? And so they're in hiding. And so the idea is, well, if you have the X-Men, then it's out in public, not that the X-Men are always widely embraced or accepted. But in this, it's more about like we're in the shadows. We're trying to find other mutants. We're being persecuted, et cetera. So we were going with Team X. Obviously, we know there might be ulterior motives in that the roadmap for Insomniac leaked a few years ago. And we saw that they planned to make Spider-Man 2 and then a Venom game, which didn't come out, but may still be in the works. Wolverine, Spider-Man 3, a new Ratchet and Clank game, and X-Men. Ultimately, this is supposed to culminate in an X-Men game. And so this is sort of building up to that. And maybe they thought it served the story. And this is a good way to get to the X-Men game as you start with the Team X or Solo Wolverine game. So that's the rationale for why the X-Men don't exist in Marvel's Wolverine. It is weird to see Logan and Jean and Mystique at all these characters, and they're not in the X-Men. But that's the explanation, at least. Now will this be successful enough to lead to the X-Men game? And probably, despite the lackluster lookworm reviews, this thing's still going to sell presumably. So I was wondering whether there would be more crossovers with the Marvel Spider-Man universe that's been established in the video game. And not really, right? I mean, there might be some Easter eggs. I don't know if there are any cameos or crossovers or Easter eggs you guys appreciated here where some comics characters showed up or at least got alluded to. But there's no Spider-Man in this game, right? So this is not really a crossover with the established in Somniac, Marvel lore. Now, we got, at least on my playthrough, I saw a dazzler poster that mentioned Hank McCoy in one of the missions. And then in MagiPoor, you see a card IOU from Remi Labo. And I'm like, OK, cool. These characters, they exist, you know, it'd be really cool if they were in the video game, the Wolverine video game. But hey, you know, what can you do? I ultimately, I don't think I need that many. Like, this is a point where like, I actually don't want to be too MCU-pilled of like having all of these games and world constantly connect to each other or like, where does this tie into Spider-Man 2 or what's going on here and there. Honestly, because I kind of want that game to speak for itself and not really have to worry about making it about something else, because it kind of, like in a small sense, takes away from the game that I'm trying to focus on. I think that the problem with Insomniac's quote-unquote road map is that I don't think that there isn't a world where you wouldn't want to make an X-Men game first. And I think that this is a bit more of a Sony kicks the can down the road for that pitch to know when the PlayStation 6 comes out. That could potentially be a system. Well, you've got to remember they're making the Kojima game. No, they're not. Not anymore. Not anymore. Not anymore. Yeah. And that's the more so. That's where I'm going to get on, wait a second. And I think that the people that are running Sony are actually sleep agents for Microsoft. But that's my that's my conspiracy. But I legitimately don't think they can afford it. It's probably not. I legitimately think with the way the not to get not to get to conspiracy brain, but legitimately the way memory works, the way like everything is going now. They're like looking around like brother. this game got to be a hit, or we're not really going, we're not going to spend our time with this. And well, this is not booming at Xbox. These days, so I don't know if you've noticed, but that game reportedly, Kojima's fizz in, I mean, reportedly, it's behind schedule overpudgets, whatever. That's drama that's separate from this sort of. But I did wonder about this just because of the impact that it has on the story. And it becomes more of a character story. It's, you know, a character study of Logan and then the will there won't they fledgling romance between Logan and Jean and, you know, through the ages and reincarnations and the Phoenix and all of that stuff. And then there is just the, you know, like Van, as you were watching this or playing this, I guess the virtue of the X-Men story is that it's been repurposed so many times, like it's, it's always something that members of minority groups or oppressed people can identify with the mutants being persecuted, right? So you could play this game now. And, you know, both of our trash is rounding up the mutants and everything. And you can read this as sort of, like, oh, is this game about immigration crackdowns? Is this game about transphobia? Like, you know, that stuff, like it's hard to play this in 2026 and not think that, but it's not explicit, right? I don't know even how intentional that's supposed to be. And, and the X-Men framework, that just, it comes back and it's just, it resonates with whatever is happening at the time that story is told, right? But there are definitely some, you know, some illusions or allegories or similarities there at least. Yeah, I think there's always going to be like whenever the X-Men story is told because as human beings, we don't seem to be able to get civilization at society, right? In an equitable way that treats everybody with dignity and humanity. I do think there's something extra that happens in this game that I think is interesting. And I just realized in the last 10 minutes, just like what a gamer. I'm not like it is like because I legitimately did because like all of the stuff that you guys were talking about, like even some of the criticisms of the game, I don't know enough about video games. So like to even have those criticisms sometimes, like listen to some of you guys, you guys know the the scale and the business of the gaming world. That's pretty impressive. But there was there was something that this game does, which is it it tries to should I say it tries to balance the brutality of the combat with a story of vulnerable people. So like particularly when you're like killing people and cutting them their heads off, it tries to give you a reason why that's happening. And when you see the treatment of some of the mutants when you see what the how the mutants are living, when you see the brutality of trash and when you see all of that, the game in my opinion, and it would have to do this almost, right? The game is underscoring why Wolverine's specific brand of brutality. And really what team X is doing why that has to happen because of people being kidnapped even like when you first meet you know leech and some of the other people that are in the game and all that stuff like that. And you see kind of the fact that they're trying to be people and be accepted by people. You hear the voice of a child saying that like what I will want more than anything was just to have a mom that that loves me even though I don't look right, all of that stuff. And then Wolverine is hearing that and he's going fucking trash the whole the entire time he's doing that. Then he has to go out and like a main a bunch of reavers. And you like don't feel as bad about it. Not that you wouldn't have not that you would have should I say like because you're playing a video game. But it makes those guys it doubles down on their villainy. I think that's true. The X-Men period, right? Like the X-Men period. In that first movie, the fucking dude gets hit with the mutant thing and then at the end of it, he's just like melts away. But I mean, and then mystique takes it like like Senator Kelly's like he'd be yeah, he melts away. And mystique takes his place. He dies in a terrible like horrible crazy scene. And like ridiculous way over the course of the entire movie. But that is buttressed up against the fact that he has people hiding in the sewer. That he has people running for their lives. That he asks people through what he's evangelizing legitimately living as people that don't have any safety in the world at all. So that'll always be something that's paramount in the X-Men will never be able to not have the reverberations and reflections of that in our life because we don't treat people right. In this game, I thought that, you know, the reavers and the trash and all of these people, they really were, you know, the bad guys. Like I felt like they hated people. They hated mutants and they stood because they cyborg. So they're not really human either. So I'm just making a laugh on man. So, so, so, so like, so like, you know, I enjoyed that part of it. Overall, for me, overall, like it, I, I tend not to be pedantic about things, period. Like you really have to get it wrong for me to go crazy and talk about how wrong it is. I get that. But with video games, even less so. Like I get mad if the game is too hard. Like I, I play MLB to show not to win. I pay, play MLB to show to hit 85 home runs. That's the reason why I'm playing. If I want to, if I want to play games two to one, like I can watch the real shit where every, where the whole league is hitting 233. Like it, I like, I, I want to play the game and hit the ball like we hit the ball in 1996. I mean, you got to do another baseball pocket. You should talk about this. Yeah. Yeah. I got, I like, I don't, I don't like, hey, this guy's killing the ball. He's raking in August. He gets up there. He's about 232. I was like, what is this guy that sport? The power numbers for this guy are off the charts. 24 homeers. I'm like, what? So, so, so, you know, like I got to like cut people up as Wolverine. I got a lot more game to play, but I have fun with it, but I can still tell that it is no Spider-Man. I can tell for sure. I can tell that much. I can tell that it is no Spider-Man. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, they do stuff a lot of stuff into this story, not so much just like, you know, look at this character making a cameo way, but it's almost like they're three acts. I won't give away too much, but, you know, it's all about Trask at the beginning of the game. And it's not a little later on. They're really a few big bads in this game. And some of them make more sense than others. And we get sort of a detour featuring Lady Death Strike in the hand. And by the way, the hand is getting too many minutes these days. We're seeing the hands. I think these are too much of our intentions. These are overdoings. They random. They random ninja niggas that we never gave a fuck about making them for last time now. They cool. I said this in the Spider-Man movie. Everybody was like, oh my god. The hand. I was like, oh my god. The hand. We got a little hyped in Daredevil season what? Three from Netflix. And then we never we never lost obsession with them. They're cool then. Yeah, since then. That's. But like they ran them too many random ninja dudes that we never had. We never got a fuck. As opposed to what? If you okay, you're going to do a ninja clan in Japan. The hand is the layup, right? You might have to do a deeper. That goes to that's crazy. You want the yakuza in the game, man. I see you. That's nuts, man. No, that's going to be great. We're over in yakuza game. Yeah. From Seiga, where you're just walking around the streets of Tokyo, going to gambling, gambling, going to the batting cages, going to karaoke. Yeah. That sounds great to me. Yeah. And sometimes like, I don't know if you guys thought, you know, there are times where it seems to be building up to a boss fight and then someone gets killed in a cutscene. You know, it's like a like skullbuster. Yeah, skullbuster gets got in a cutscene. You don't have to fight him. There's like this telepaths for the hands. I don't know if it's Ogan or Ogan or not even named that you're just like haunting you and then you don't get to fight him or anything. Yeah. It's a little weird. I don't know if that was entirely planned. And then there's some characters like in jeans mutant group who just like Kalisto, you know, she's around. Like, you're not really learning what is that? What is that? These characters at all. They're just part of the match. TV. Yeah. Ever Wilson. Yeah. She is in shout outs or agent for getting these video game roles. Like every other AAA game. She is in in some capacity. And I'm like, man, it's so little distracted now because they almost always, if you have a well-known actor, because it's all motion-capped. Yeah. And that helps with the animation. But then they use the actors' faces typically in the game. And so like Essex, Mr. Sinister just looks like Troy Baker. It's a little bit distracting. I bet you know what I'm sorry. They're like, you're using my life piece. It's going to be me now. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe. Yeah. Anyway. Yeah. The nice thing about this is if you get sort of a semi-disappointment like this game, you don't have to have a whole round of superhero fatigue talk because it's almost separate because like we're we're having a pretty solid post-peak year for Marvel on the whole, both you know, critically commercially brand-new day, X-Men 97 season two wonder man even in video games with Marvel token fighting souls and then Doom stays looming. And then we'll over It kind of takes a little wind out of the sales, but we don't have to do the whole it's so over. We're so back every time a video game comes out because I think Marvel's Wolverine falling flat is more of an insomniac and Sony story. Then it is a Marvel story or a superhero story, right? No one's saying like Marvel, they've lost their touch when this game comes out because it's not like Marvel meets the game, right? So it doesn't really fit into that narrative mercifully, so we don't have to hash that out again. And, you know, look, there's a lot to recommend it's people have focused on the negative often we have to and there is a lot of negative, but it's it's a fun game for what it is. It's just that because of the pedigree of insomniac because of the legacy of the Spider-Man games, because of the $70 price tag, because people were assuming that this would be well. And then it turns out to be a decent action game that's pretty fun to rip people apart for a while and probably not that memorable ultimately and maybe lean to little too hard on these tropes and everything, but it looks great. It sounds good. It runs well. You probably have a decent time with it for 15 hours or so or at least 10 hours and then you might be ready for it to be over as I was. I thought this game was over like three times before it actually ends, but this podcast, I think, is over. We can bring this to a close. And I'm glad that you guys could come on. You know, you begged me to come on as we established. You know, just basically. And I was just like, I mean, I guess you guys can come on. We'll do another Wolverine episode. So here you go. You got it. This is my gift to you. No, thank you very much guys. I'm glad that I could get most of the midnight voice. I mean, I mean, we'll be doing several GTA 6 episodes. I assume so you you can certainly call one of them. This is just this is just a way to get coached though. This is you know, I would say that it's for GTA. I mean, why would we even say it like that, bro? You know, you know, it's cool. You know, it's family, man. Why would you even imply that we would come on the podcast just to get coached to the game. You got to shake it though. You got to shake it. That's crazy. That's wow. I hope anyone will get GTA coats. Even me. I don't know. We'll see. That's what they're like. It doesn't matter. You get GTA. People will be fine. They don't give you a cover. There's no way they will. Hey, yeah, you want to review the game? They need the fuck mashed money dollars. What? You can contact but mash at ring of burst gaming at gmail.com. Thank you to Devon Rolando for producing this episode and to our junior rim pal for his senior podcast management. There's tons of big games coming out over the next few weeks. Fire emblem fortunes. We have control resident silent hill townfall star wars galactic racer. You got to be a vampire or a dawn walker who doesn't sleep to play all these games. Fortunately, I am. This will be back next Thursday to cover Zack Greggers resident evil movie. And before that, you can catch van joe me and Steve with a special guests substituting for Charles on Sunday night immediately after lanterns episode five. Until then, okay, suckers. We've taken our best shots. Now it's your turn. [Music]