2026 Summer Game Fest + Friends | A Fine Time Special

[00:00:00] It's driving time with fun. Hello, conference people. Hello, party people as well. It's your boy, Dre. And oh my God, it's my boy, Kevin. He's back.

[00:00:31] I wanted to just be quiet for a minute because I know that's what you do. You say, Kevin, Kevin, where are you, Kevin? Oh, so he's been listening, Steve. I'm just fucking with you. I'm here. He's been listening to us talk shit about him while he's not here. I don't know. Maybe if he wasn't so, you know, the way he is, he wouldn't be this way. Why are you the way you are?

[00:00:54] You should know this because I did specifically call out Steve from two shows ago when I got specifically called a quote unquote little bitch. You did. Yeah, I don't even remember why you called him a little bitch. I don't know anymore either. Couldn't have been for anything important. No, not at all. There's a multitude of reasons that I'm a little bitch. It could have been anything really. I mean, but, but yeah, we're here. We're going to talk about Summer Games Fest. We're going to talk about Microsoft.

[00:01:23] We're going to talk about all the conferences that happened over the last week. But of course, this is a Nintendo show first and foremost, because that's how we roll. We are going to talk about the Nintendo Direct first. All right, guys, let's just get right into this because we have a lot to cover today.

[00:01:53] General reception, Kevin, how did you feel about this direct? You've been always the one who's been the most vocal. I don't want this partner direct bullshit. I don't want blah, blah, blah. This is like the first real direct in a long time. So how did you feel finally? Yeah, and I don't, I'm trying not to be reactive because this, I did not think this was a good direct. I don't think this was a real bad direct. You know, and a lot of, because a lot of the cool things that were there, I think are just, they're not going to hit for me. Right.

[00:02:22] We got Xenoblade and Kingdom Hearts. And, you know, I'm sure Steve was jazzed to see, see some more Fire Emblem. But regardless, whether it was for me, you know, those things or not, I don't, I don't think for summer fake E3 direct, when it's been a while since we've had one, like kicking off year two of Switch 2. I just, I felt like, I kind of thought we were going to be firing on all cylinders with this, and I don't think they were.

[00:02:51] And so, yeah, again, I'm trying not to be reactive and saying that this was shit because it wasn't. But they've really set a high precedent for directs, and it's been a long time since we've had one. I feel like this should have been stronger than it was, honestly. I mean, and I'm probably going to say the same thing about Summer Games Fest as well. I don't think this was bad. This was totally fine. There's nothing here that blew me away, but I thought it was a very good show. I'm with you.

[00:03:18] There's a lot of things here that were huge that I just personally don't care about. But that's okay. That doesn't mean that it was a bad show. It's just like, it's just, you know, it's not like a couple years ago where we had what I consider to be the best direct ever. You know, that shit was crazy good. But I would imagine since Steve cares more about the things here than either of us, he probably thinks of most of us, most of it more than us. No, actually, I was similar to Team Kevin.

[00:03:48] Like, man, this was a good direct, but this wasn't. This is year two of the Switch direct where we should have seen a lot more like I'm with you there. And I also have some problems with pacing. I have problems with pacing with a few of these shows. We'll get to those eventually. Yeah, I'll yell at you then. Yeah. I felt a lot better, like, about the lineup after I was putting everything in on the list. I'm like, oh, these are good. But the way, I don't know, I think we're losing something in presentation here a little bit. I don't know, man.

[00:04:16] Koizumi did play Thumb War for a solid, like, three minutes. Yeah. I mean, that was a highlight. Oh, man. The way he was stroking that Joy-Con, too, man. He was just, like, into it. I don't think for, like, most, like, fair weather video game fans, this was good either. No. I think for, you know, this felt like a very, like, niche.

[00:04:44] Not niche in our circles necessarily, but in the grand scheme of things, a fairly niche direct. I think so. Like, state of play, as we'll get to later, that was huge. I mean, they showed that in theaters for a reason. That was, like, big-time mainstream stuff in there that I completely understand why they wanted, like, hey, show up to this. And they announced that, say, to play two weeks early for a reason. Hey, everyone is going to want to watch this. And I understand why they did that.

[00:05:12] This direct, you know, good. I think that's also why it was, like, 7 in the morning and not, like, a 2 p.m. one, like they usually do. But I don't know. You say usually, but I think they're mostly in the morning. I don't know. I feel like they used to do ones like this, like the 2 p.m., 3 p.m. slot. Am I wrong? I feel like they just do whatever the hell they want. I don't know. This was good. Let's get into it. Y'all like Rhythm Heaven. I legitimately hate Rhythm Heaven.

[00:05:41] I know hate is a strong word, but I do. Kevin, was this palatable to you? You like this? Yeah. No, I was already 100% in on this. This is a day one buy. But, I mean, even, again, not to drag us back into terms of how good the direct was. It was a strange choice to, like, kick it off with, you know, a Switch 1 game that we already knew about before the summer direct. I don't know.

[00:06:07] It kind of, like, set a tone that maybe, great to see this again. It's coming soon, but maybe not a showstopper to kick things off. Look, I'm all in for Rhythm Heaven 2, but, I mean, it's a problem I was having with other shows. We didn't need to start the show with five minutes of this. I don't know why you're, okay, well, I'll yell at you about this with State of Play, because it matters more there. But this is such a weird take by you. I don't understand.

[00:06:37] Trailers, move on. Come on. This is a presentation, and they are presenting. I don't know. You could present it better. I can see where you're coming from in some cases. Like, the pacing for Rhythm Heaven or any of the direct stuff didn't seem off to me. Maybe it's because I watched all these back to back to back to back.

[00:07:01] Well, I mean, and then, well, after Rhythm Heaven, it turns into the Capcom Direct, because, boom, here's Onimusha, Dragon's Dogma 2. And then, like, there was other ports, too, that weren't Capcom. There is Metaphor Re-Fantasio. That's coming to Switch. There was all sorts of ports. And I wanted to bring this up because I think we talked about it near the beginning of Switch 2, guys, where I was like, they can't just rely on late ports anymore.

[00:07:29] You could do that on Switch because it's like, oh, man, the system's running this thing, right? Can't do that anymore. Switch 2 is powerful. It could run this shit. This isn't a surprise, or it isn't novel, right? So, despite that, I thought the fact that Capcom and crew and other third parties showed up and was like, hey, we're putting all this fairly recent stuff on Switch. I guess Devil May Cry is the only thing that's, like, really old. Devil May Cry 5.

[00:08:00] I mean, I think it just feels like it's just, like, part of the thing that they're doing and have been doing for a while at this point. I don't, yeah, I don't think it feels novel, but I don't think it feels out of place. Okay. I mean, Capcom's out again. We did our Pragmata show, and guess what? I played that on Switch 2. And Onimusha's going to be on day one with everything, too. So, I think they're allowed to draw out a few more slightly older hits. Well, Onimusha is fine because it's not even out yet.

[00:08:29] So, it's not even really a port. It's just day and date with, you know, the other stuff. But it's, I mean, or at least I think it is. I think it said. It is. Okay. Well, one thing that was another port was Stellar Blade was also here, which, like, wow. All right. I didn't know the PS5 exclusivity on that was, like, up. It must have been really short terms, but I did joke about this last year.

[00:08:57] We were going to get the direct that started with Halo and ended with Stellar Blade, and that would have been the end of the console wars. But almost a year later isn't bad. Here's Stellar Blade on Switch 2. I guess they need money. Everyone needs money. Oh, I'm sure. Look at other layoffs. I'm sure. Well, yes, of course. I think even Shift Up had layoffs. Steve, you got anything for me on this Pokemon? Pococoppa? Spanakoppa? I don't know what happened there. You're underwater or something? Yeah.

[00:09:26] Pokemon Pocoppa is getting a free underwater update in August, and they announced the season pass. And between that and Wind and Waves, don't worry. The Poke pals who do know what they're talking about will be returning to the airwaves in 2027. You don't have to listen to that bad man, Andre, anymore. I don't know, man. I think I did pretty good on the Ultra Beast or regular basic bitch Pokemon. You had a 50-50 shot. Well, you have a 50-50 shot with all those games.

[00:09:54] Well, I mean, I don't know, man. I did go one for 10 that one time. So don't, I mean. Yeah, well. Don't put it past me. And that was with visual aids. So, you know. Okay. Go for it, Steve. Fire Emblem, Fortune's Weave. It was here. Kind of a big blowout for this coming out in September. Say all the things you want to say. Yeah. I got real hard for this one last year when it was the, we have one more game to show. And then I'm even more antsy now.

[00:10:22] There's four campaigns, guys. Four fucking campaigns. And barring some fuckery with the storytelling, this is a prequel. I know we thought sequel for a second. No, this is a before business. It's going to take a long fucking time for me to go through this. I wish I had someone to post game show with this. But, ah, fuck it. Also, there's a lot of discourse about this one being $70 to $80 that were physical. Oh, no.

[00:10:50] I have to pay for Fire Emblem versus less for other games. First off, this is what we were worrying about the whole time. Games can't be uniform across the board anymore. Also, this was the highest ticket item that we know about so far. Secondly, it's actually a $120 game for me because I'm buying the fancy box. They showed me. I was going to ask. I mean, they did. I knew that. I mean, I was looking at that fancy box. I'm like, I know you're getting that shit. You son of a bitch.

[00:11:17] I said, you son of a bitch to my phone as I was watching. Yeah, I know we all do that. I'm sure I'll give first impressions in September. It's soon. But, yeah, $70 ain't bad. I mean, that's exactly what I would expect Fire Emblem to cost. Anyway, Kevin, I know you kind of dabble or kind of scared of Fire Emblem. Well, it's been. I've been wanting to try a modern Fire Emblem again. I remember a couple years ago I played Final Fantasy Tactics Advance and I had some success and I got a little bit of confidence.

[00:11:48] I was talking to Steve about this a few months ago. Like, I had tossed around picking up three houses for a while and I find the vibe of this much more interesting from that trailer. So, yeah, I might give this a shot depending on what's going on in September. I do find like the scope of four campaigns and Steve saying how long this is going to take him to play. That's intimidating. I cannot see myself playing four campaigns worth of that. I think that's just for sickos.

[00:12:17] I'm sure you can get by with just playing a campaign. Most people will just play one or played one or two in three houses. Okay. You don't look you don't look down on those people. You don't have to join us in five more years of three houses discourse land. Can you cheat? Can you like new game plus it or something? Oh, yeah. That's the only way I did it. Okay. Did three houses. All right. Yeah. Do we think one of those campaigns will be like easy mode?

[00:12:48] Looking at the characters, I am sure the lady with the instruments is going to be hard mode. After that, I don't know. I'll stay away from the lady with instruments. Yeah, that's kind of it might be. Is it kind of like one of those things where it's like when you play a dungeon crawler, like the makeup of your party kind of determines the difficulty of the game? Like how hard do you really want this to be? Like that type of shit.

[00:13:13] Like like like Steve, like in Trials of Mana, like either you have Charlotte or you don't have Charlotte. So either you're playing easy mode or hard mode. Right. No, I mean, it can be. Well, the way three houses is built anyway, they had like the three houses and these are the guys that live in the three houses. And anyway, they showed Ninjala 2, which was OK. So we've been speculating about this game.

[00:13:40] So when any live service game dies in our chat on Discord, we're always like, OK, Ninjala's next or like we always it always gets mentioned. Right. I don't know why you always slander Ninjala just because like we never hear anyone talk about it. But Steve, it must have an audience. If one, it's been around this whole time and it's been up to it's getting a sequel. Somebody's playing it. It's not me or you or Kevin. Maybe it's Kevin's kids. Kevin, are your kids playing Ninjala? No, it's not that I know of.

[00:14:11] OK, we'll solve this mystery one day. I don't know. Matthew could be on Ninjala as big Luigi, just like killing, just crushing everybody. Yeah, maybe he's in there telling me he's going to play Minecraft. He's sneaking in some Ninjala. So I'm not talking shit about him. I don't know. Yeah, you never know. He could just be man up there. Ninjala top 10 top 10 player. But yeah, Ninjala 2. The only reason why this is significant to me is because I don't know if you guys caught this language.

[00:14:39] They said it was the first part of Ninjala 2 or the first something. And I'm like, so is this to be expanded upon? Because it looked like some sort of four player cooperative thing. It didn't look like the typical team based PVP of before. So I don't know what's going on there. Some real PVE, VE, VP, VE. Oh, I feel like we don't. I feel like Exo Primal killed that dead or maybe Sea of Thieves.

[00:15:07] Maybe the combination of the two. I don't know. I'm sure the fans will follow it. Whoever you are. Y'all tried this Donkey Kong challenge thing. Obviously, this isn't really my thing. So I did not try. I have already cleared the classic challenges. What do you do? Yeah, they set you up and game set up from the app and they're like, do this. And then you do it. And then they give you a card. Do what though? Beat a level.

[00:15:37] Kill these guys. Whatever. So is it like NES? Whatever the fuck that is. NES challenge or not. What is what are those games called for like 3DS? Oh, no. NES Remix was trying to be its own thing. This is they haven't changed anything. Yeah, it's just bite-sized chunks of, you know, beat King K. Rool. Once you do it, you get the card. It just flashes you into that point of the game and that's it. Okay.

[00:16:07] So is it like WarioWare? Did they happen like really fast or you just do it and then you just do it and you get another one? Okay. You guys don't seem too enthused about it. I mean, I don't know. Is it like okay or just like. That would have been a primo spot to say, hey, here's year two of GameCube games, but they didn't do it. Here's DK challenge instead. I don't know. I mean, it's so like I thought it's kind of cool just to collect the cards. It's so like short and innocent that it's, you know, there's nothing like glowingly special here.

[00:16:36] I don't think. And I think more of the. So I'll only have done some of the retro ones. I haven't done any of the Bonanza stuff, but that I feel like they're going to have more of a chance to be like, you know, like punch a hundred enemies within, you know, one minute or whatever. Something like that. I was going to try Bonanza, but they wanted me to insert my game card. Come on. You saw me play it last summer. Nintendo. I agreed to share the time. I agreed to share my analytics with you.

[00:17:06] You know, I own the game. Come on. What? Yeah, you're running a limited time event. I think you could spare some bite sized chunks of Bonanza until September. Somebody's sitting in somebody's sitting in Nintendo's office and they're like that son of a bitch. Steve rented Bonanza from the library a year ago just so he could get in and try and get in on some free DK challenge. We're not having it. Can I please back up?

[00:17:31] Did you just say they shouldn't have had DK challenge so they can have a year or two of GameCube games? Are those words that came out of your mouth? Well, that was the spot where they're like, this is the shit we're doing for NSO. So I don't know. Fuck what's actually happening. Give me what I want specifically. Yeah, I guess Kevin's rubbing off. I mean, like, what is happening? Anyway, Devil May Cry 5.

[00:18:01] I mean, I mentioned it earlier, but like that was weird. It's really old at this point. I'm not sure why that's on Switch 2. I guess why not? Because they probably sell another half a million Devil May Cry 5s. But it's weird, I think, Kevin. I don't think it's as old as it. I don't think it needed to look like it did because I thought that looked like shit. Did it not? Like just graphically? I seen that and I was like, is this running on original Switch?

[00:18:31] Honestly, I did. Original Switch would never be able to run this. Like not even. I mean, it's a PS4 game. So it's old. I mean, it's from 20 what? I guarantee this looked worse than it looked on PS4. It had to have. I thought it looked noticeably shitty. I'll have to go back. I didn't think it looked any different from what I played on PS4. Then again, I did play it on PS5, but I don't think it was enhanced. Well, maybe it was enhanced that. I don't remember.

[00:19:00] Point is. Just like the hair and stuff was like, ooh, chunky. I mean, it probably is low res. I mean, I don't know if that's what all these things do. I don't know if you saw the Dragon's Dogma 2 footage kind of look pretty assy, too. Yeah, but no one likes Dragon's Dogma 2, except for the psychos. Well, Pragmato is looking pretty fucking chunky, too, on Switch, too. It doesn't really matter too much. Unlike if you're playing handheld, I guess.

[00:19:25] But if you throw that bitch on the TV like I did, baby, I tell you what, it's crunchy. Guys, Muramasa refuses to die. Like, I played that on Wii getting to be probably more than 15 years ago now. That just seems to be the Vanilla Wear game that maybe because it's their best game by a long shot. I don't know if that's controversial, but I don't know, man. I'm not really interested in playing Muramasa again.

[00:19:53] I feel like this is like the third or fourth time they re-released this. I haven't played this game once, so this isn't a sequel. This is the first game again. Yes. Oh, jeez. I guess I could play this one then, but... Yeah, it's the first game again. It didn't look like a sequel. It looked like exactly the same thing I played on Wii. I mean, I guess I'll play this one then, but... Well, I finally got what I wanted.

[00:20:20] I wasn't specifically waiting for versions of Xenoblade on Switch 2, but we got them all. Every single one. They did some enhancements for X a few months ago, but now they're all coming. Xenoblade Definitive Edition, Xenoblade 2, and Xenoblade 3 dispersed throughout the year. Xenoblade Definitive Edition for Nintendo Switch 2 is available now. Two in July, and I think three in December. I have not played two or three.

[00:20:47] I've been meaning to play two pretty much the entire Switch generation. I just never got around to it because RPGs, you know how that goes. Now I can play it better than ever. I think I'm glad I waited until now inadvertently. So yeah, I'm here for all of this. As you probably remember, Xenoblade Definitive Edition came out during the Rona. I really enjoyed it. I played the whole thing. So yeah, I would like to try these for sure. Looking good.

[00:21:17] 4K 60. I accidentally waited for three because financial problems that summer was either, well, Live Alive, Xenoblade 3, and well, guess what episodes in our archive. So you'll know what I picked at the time. I'll pay my 10 bucks for the upgrade pack around Christmas and finally play Xenoblade 3. I already paid five for the upgrade pack on X. I got to play that too. Goddamn. It's five bucks for X? Yeah.

[00:21:47] Probably because they knew they should have did that the whole fucking time. I know. Well, dude, I mean, they data mined it. 60 frames per second was in the code when the game shipped. So all they had to do was flip the switch for five bucks, apparently. There's other stuff too, but yeah. Kevin's already played them all. He already knows. Yeah, he's going to be more than ready for Xenoblade Chronicles Genesis next year. Yeah. So Genesis implies prequel, right?

[00:22:16] I mean, I don't know enough about the stories of these to really know that, but it kind of looked prequely. Yeah, it looked. Yeah. Well, I mean, I got to play the fuck through three so I can be ready for this shit. Too many fucking games. There was no Bionicle and Mechanical or whatever the fuck they're called. They already got rid of that in two. Okay. I mean, I'm sure. I'm just saying like, you know, that it's not that time. Right. So I don't know. Maybe they'll show up at the end. Who knows?

[00:22:46] I know Kevin's ready for Switch Sports Resort. Oh, yeah. The game he keeps forgetting exists on Switch for some reason. Whatever we bring it up. I got another few years to talk shit about this one too now. We'll get some mileage out of it. It didn't sell millions of copies. What are you talking about? Yeah. 18 million copies. Fuck it. I don't even know if it's 18 million. I know it's a lot though. I don't know. I mean, I'm not really interested in this. Do you guys want to play 1, 2, 3, 4? I Declare Thumb War. Can you do that online?

[00:23:16] I did think that was fucking hilarious how they're like the one thing. We need to like stop and have someone demo a game in this direct. And it was for thumb wrestling. Yeah. We need to have a high ranking Nintendo official executive play thumb wrestling. But he seemed like he was having a good time. Like, and he legitimately, I would bought that he was having fun. I'll tell you what. If there's like thumb wrestle with Koizumi day, like once a month.

[00:23:46] I'll buy this game. Like where he has to go on and take on all challengers. Oh, I thought you meant like his me or something like that. No, he physically had. Well, it would be his me, but he physically has to come on and thumb wrestle with all of us. I mean, that would be, that would be great. I don't know. He did lose to the computer. So maybe, maybe we can beat him. Yeah. Yeah. I think that was just for effect. I don't know.

[00:24:14] Okay, guys, you're ready to talk about the Star Fox demo because they put that thing up. Y'all, y'all are the ones. I don't know. Should I go last? I've been the Debbie Downer here. Why don't, why don't you guys talk about it first? You all know what I'm going to fucking say here. It's great. It feels good. Looks good. Sounds good. I wanted to keep playing it. So I kept finding excuses. I played both roads on Meteo. I even tried it in mouse mode. That works. Break a booster awkwardly on the right stick.

[00:24:48] I don't know how much of that is me and how much of that is just me not playing action games with a mouse. I mean, I tried a bit of Metroid Prime 4 last Christmas in mouse mode and hit the same conclusion. I can't play action games with a mouse. I can't. Okay. Thumbs up on Star Fox then? Thumbs up on Star Fox. Can't wait for two more weeks. Kevin, did you watch the Mario Galaxy movie 14 more times in anticipation of playing? I've watched it one more time since the theater in anticipation of playing Star Fox.

[00:25:18] Yeah. I mean, this demo was, it was, it fucking, Steve said it, it looked great. And it played great. It was super fun. And, and Mr. Like bitch about Star Fox, you tell me you didn't have fun. You did have fun. I fucking know you had fun. It was a fun demo. I had fun. Okay. Jesus Christ. It's fucking Star Fox 64. Of course I had fun. I still hate all the circumstances though. That's what pisses me off. I hate that. A remake of Star Fox 64 is called Star Fox.

[00:25:47] I will never get over that. I hate that they did the most, like the least interesting thing they could possibly do to bring Star Fox back. And I hate that they trampled an entire Mario movie to promote it. All of that still fucking sucks. That doesn't mean that I don't like Star Fox 64. I do. And this looks great. I know. Again, I know I said this during our initial impressions. I know a lot of people have problems with the graphics. I don't fuck. I I'm not one of them. I think this game looks incredible.

[00:26:17] So I don't know. I'm here for it. I'm going to get it. I disagree with your assessment that they that they like purposefully added in Star Fox to the Mario Galaxy movie to promote this game. I'm not buying it. I'm just saying I don't think that's the case. I think that they absolutely these are probably no, I'm sure that there was some thought into like there are two things that we can kind of like use in synergy for marketing.

[00:26:46] But I do think that, you know, the idea was like, well, OK, Galaxy, we you know, we just just by virtue of name, we have the opportunity to like, you know, bring something else into this. I just I do not think that this was that the Mario Galaxy movie has Star Fox in it solely because they were like, we want to sell a game because of that. I don't buy it. I. If that wasn't the case, this is the most suspicious timing.

[00:27:15] Of all time. That's all I got to say. No, I'm sure that. Yeah. Again, they were they were obviously aware of that well in advance. Right. So, again, I'm sure that there, you know, there were obviously discussions that we can promote these things in tandem. I just don't think that it's as like black and white, you know, a fueled B as you're making it out to be. OK. OK, I guess I'll just leave it there. I'll argue.

[00:27:43] I'm sure I'll argue more about this in about a month whenever we cover it on a big deal. So we can do it then. I like Star Fox, but I still hate Star Fox. Yeah, I like Star Fox, but I hate Star Fox. That's basically where I'm at. Love this fucking game. Damn it. Fuck Star Fox. I'm paying fifty dollars for it. Fuck off. It is fifty bucks, right? I didn't make that up for you. Yes. For me. Well, I'm buying a K box, so I got to pay sixty.

[00:28:12] You can you can pay dummy tax all you want. Did you did you were you hot for Piku Niku 2? That looked like it came straight off the PSP. It looked like literally a 3D PSP game. Yeah, he was a strange guy when I played it a few years ago, but I don't know if I need him to be in 3D. Well, it is weird. I like that it was very low tech. Anyway, I just wanted to mention that real quick as a taster before we talk about shown here.

[00:28:41] I don't know if it was like the biggest thing shown here, but it was definitely the most surprising thing for me anyway. And that was Final Fantasy Resonance full on HD 2D Final Fantasy. Man, I know that I came on here about a month ago and I talked about all my problems with Octopath Traveler Zero and I shouldn't hold. I guess maybe I should start at the beginning.

[00:29:09] Final Fantasy Resonance is another game that is reused mobile assets or taking what is what was done for a mobile game and make it into a quote unquote real game. That was Octopath Traveler Zero. And that game's story and pacing was the death of that game for me. And there just seems to be a thing with free to play RPGs where I do not like the pacing. That's why I tried Hongkai Star Rail for like a while.

[00:29:38] I could not get into the pacing of that story. I realized very early on the way they're telling this is not going to be a way that is ever going to not piss me off pacing wise. So I kind of stopped, even though I like the gameplay. I really, really hope Final Fantasy Resonance does not fall into that trap again. I don't know if it's fair for me to hold Octopath Zero against it, but that's what I feel right now. So I'm hoping this can be different.

[00:30:07] I'm not super hopeful about it, but it looks so cool that I hope it overcomes what I think it's going to overcome. I'm just because it's HD2D and, you know, Steve's a whore for that. I'm kind of hoping that it does. I mean, the actual game that I say actual, like it exists and is a real game that they're ripping it off from. The source material isn't in HD2D like Octopath Traveler was, and they're sitting there redoing it all. So I'm kind of hoping some care is in there.

[00:30:38] It's one of those cheesier things where they summon old heroes. We were doing that for a few games. World of Final Fantasy was doing that. That's what comes to mind. Yeah. I'm like, I don't know, you guys. I'm going to buy this thing. Don't get me wrong about it. I don't know. I'm sure it'll be fine. But, but, you know, I'm also, there's like one little gremlin in the back of my head like, you know what would be the funniest shit in the world?

[00:31:01] If Final Fantasy VII was an HD2D, they pull out Baking Man 9, that shit, and just fucking that would be, that would be a disaster. Kevin, are you remotely interested in this or? I mean, I do, I guess kind of further to Steve's point, I do feel like it is a little bit of a shame that they're, you know, doing a Final Fantasy HD2D thing and, and they are doing like centering it around, you know, other heroes from the franchise and moments from

[00:31:30] other games or whatever, Channel, Channel Cloud. I just, that feels like a little bit of a missed opportunity to not do something like cool and original. I'm not saying do a like mainline numbered Final Fantasy necessarily, but so I don't, I'm not going to like write it off on that, but I don't like find this all that interesting specifically because of that. And based on, I wasn't surprised when, you know, to find out this is a kind of a rehash mobile thing. I don't know.

[00:31:55] So I'm, I'm like open to seeing more about this, but it just, it feels like it cheapens it when, when you need to say, Hey, you know, that you're going to see those characters, you know, and love in this, like that needs to like be a tent pole to hold it up. I don't know. I agree on the surface, but there is a way they can make that cool. There is other games that can, that have stuff from the past, past characters and make it its own thing.

[00:32:23] It is possible, but obviously since it's a mobile thing, I'm sure those past characters are like gotcha or whatever, right now that's not the case anymore. So they're just in the game. Again, there is a way they can make that cool, but, and I, and I hope that they do, but we'll, we'll see. I just think they could have made it very cool without it. Make this like fucking, you know, Final Fantasy mystic quest rebirth. I agree.

[00:32:50] I would, I would prefer that myself if, if it were completely original, but since it's not, I hope that they can pull it off in a way that just doesn't feel, Hey, remember, I don't know shit for, remember lightning. Uh, wow. Here's noctis, you know, shit like that. Um, the duskbloods, they finally showed more footage of this since like probably the switch to reveal. I don't think this game has appeared since and I think everyone knows that I don't

[00:33:19] like this dark soul shit. I'm an old school from software person, dark souls and dear and beyond. No, thank you. Never have liked that shit. Never will. However, I will say this. You guys know that multiplayer Elden ring game, Elden ring night rain. Have you guys seen that shit? It's like a three player, like co-op online thing. Yeah. I think that shit looks a lot of fun. I've seen a fair amount of footage of that game. Like people playing it.

[00:33:48] I was like, huh? I don't know what it is about this, but this is like kind of appealing, you know? And the duskbloods is obviously going to be like a online thing. Not, I don't know how much it's going to be like night rain, but online co-op. So this might be the end road for me. And I already liked the way it looks. So definitely if I can get into this network test somehow, I'm very interested to find out. Maybe, maybe I'll get into it. So I would like to play.

[00:34:18] I'm interested for you to find out as well. All right. I will similarly try to get into the network test because we do a podcast and it'd be good if we did. Oh, if we can get into that shit. Hmm. Yes. That would be great. As soon as there's signups, everyone let us know. Everyone give us their codes to log in. Don't know how much I have to say about Splatoon Raiders since there's going to be a direct at the end of the month about it.

[00:34:46] But did you guys see the new colored, quote unquote, colored Joy-Cons? Black on black. Yeah. That's what we're doing this time, I guess. I don't know. But yeah, we'll probably just have to talk about that when the direct comes around. Unless you got anything to say now, Kevin. I thought that this segment, like I already was interested in this and just less so about the game itself.

[00:35:13] I thought they did a very good job with this segment showing like what to what this game is without going on excessively. I just thought that outside of the game, this was a really good example to show off a unique game in a direct. I felt like I had like a much better grasp of what to expect out of this, but it also didn't take, you know, eight minutes to like try and explain it and get into the weeds.

[00:35:38] It was still like relatively snappy, but they were just like very articulate in explaining what this was. I thought it made me more excited for this. I think that was a great showing as a showing. They showed the right stuff. The footage was very carefully picked and showed stuff that's like, oh, okay, I see how they're getting from A to B and stuff like that. So yeah. So I'm looking forward to seeing the direct, Steve.

[00:36:02] Yeah, I'm going to keep an eye on the direct too, because I need to know if this is actually going to be roguelike-ish or not. I mean, if it isn't at this point, I don't know what they're doing. It should be. Because I need to know definitively for our next place, our bets around. By the way, speaking of roguelikes, did you see that they're adding that weird like top down roguelike-ish mode to Xenoblade Chronicles 3 Switch 2 edition? Did you see that little clip? And then you're like picking a power.

[00:36:32] It's like very roguelike-y. Yeah, they're adding very weird things to these games to make sure it's worth the $10. They're trying over there. Yeah, you know, I think all the upgrades have been worth it so far. Don't really have much to say about the sizzle reel, but Steve, did we know about Tales of Eternia Remastered before it appeared in the sizzle reel? I'm not sure that I knew about that. It was leaked a while ago, but no, this was the official reveal.

[00:36:59] The Japanese direct actually got a proper segment for Tales of Eternia Remastered. In any case, either me or we need to pull on Bill for a postgame. That's right. We're planning collaborations right now live on the air. I don't give a fuck. Me and Bill need to talk about the Gal Gun series, okay? We need to be perverts together. I know Bill enough to, I think he'll just be a pervert no matter what you do. I mean, he did invite us on 3DO Experience to talk about porn.

[00:37:28] I hate that my computer broke for that, but I've been on 2-3DOs since then. It's okay. Don't worry. Yeah, see, now you've been on more 3DOs than me. You sick fuck. You got anything to say about Deltarune, you dick? Just that I'm looking forward to it. You know, they're on a roll over there now that he's actually hired a staff to help him. They had the two chapters last year and the one this year. We might actually see the end of this before the end of the decade. Wow. I think it's supposed to be seven.

[00:37:59] Seven chapters. Yeah. Okay. I'll leave you to it. I unexpectedly have a lot to say about Kingdom Hearts 4, believe it or not. So, I don't know. You guys can chime in on this if you feel like it, and I hope you do so I don't just yammer for minutes.

[00:38:15] But first of all, I think this is an incredibly ballsy drop to have on a Nintendo Direct because Squeenix, yeah, they may have this new multi-platform focus. But they are still a very graphics and image forward company. Like, that shit really matters to them a lot.

[00:38:42] And so, for them to show actual Kingdom Hearts 4 gameplay for the first time on a system that is by far going to, like, display it the worst, that's certainly a choice. Maybe they thought it was worth it because it's at a Nintendo Direct and most people watch that shit. Maybe it's the amount of eyeballs. So, it's like, okay, it's worth showing it this way. Not that it looked like crap, but I, like, you guys know what I mean.

[00:39:11] Like, Square doesn't really do that. They save that shit for, you know, when they can really show it. Well, we'll get to things that they really had to show later. But, I mean, you're not wrong. But Kingdom Hearts, you know, I don't know if it needs help, but I know Square Enix says they do. So, they'll show Nintendo Kingdom Hearts and they'll show other people Final Fantasy 7. And, you know, everything's for everybody eventually.

[00:39:37] Yeah, but the first time you see gameplay, do you want it to look its worst? I mean, I wouldn't. Have you seen the Kingdom Hearts fans? I don't think they care. I don't know. I also, I get what you're saying. I do think, though, despite being, you know, obviously traditionally a Sony-associated franchise, that, like, Nintendo doesn't not make sense to, like, be forward with a franchise like this. Yeah, I mean, I get it.

[00:40:09] There's a reason why it was here, obviously. So, I understand their thinking. I just don't, I don't know. That feels so, I would have personally showed it at a state of play or something, but I'm also, that's why I'm not an executive, high-powered executive. New guy leaves birthday parties. Yeah, you know, I've, fuck, that shit better look good. I have a killer instinct, SNS, fuck off. Steve, I thought, do you remember the initial teaser of Sora waking up in, like, the real world in the city?

[00:40:39] Yeah. I never thought that would be what we see in gameplay. I thought that would just be a far-flung concept, not even close to, like, a real game. But no, this gameplay, they're fighting it out. They're duking it out in that city. I did not expect that at all. It may be the closest I get to The World Ends With You 3. No, I'm just kidding. I'm not even touching that right now. Oh, Nomura is not even, I mean, please.

[00:41:06] He is ascended now because of the Final Fantasy VII trilogy. He can't go back to no basic bitch world ends with you. Look, I got my sequel a few years ago. I just have to be happy with that. That's all you can get. There is one significant thing, and of course, I don't even like Kingdom Hearts whatsoever, but I did think this was interesting. Showing Noctis. You guys did catch that, right? They had Noctis there. I thought that was kind of a big deal.

[00:41:36] Because they have severely dialed back the Final Fantasy stuff in Kingdom Hearts over the years. Like, very, very early in this show's history, me and Ven played Kingdom Hearts III blind. And we did that for a reason, just because it's like, okay, we don't know anything about this. We went into this. And one of the things we came away with was like, there is almost no Final Fantasy. I thought this was supposed to be Final Fantasy characters and Disney characters and the original characters. But there was almost no Final Fantasy in III.

[00:42:06] Showing Noctis here, though, in IV, like front and center, was kind of like, oh, maybe they're relenting on that somehow. I don't know what the reason was for dialing back the Final Fantasy in the first place, but I think that makes it more appealing if you can have Clive, I don't know, beat the shit out of Clive with a Keyblade, right? Is that what you do in Kingdom Hearts? I don't know. Maybe. Probably. I only play them myself.

[00:42:35] I need to just, if I really hit myself, I could buy the trilogy. Don't. Please don't. Mostly because I don't want to hear you talk about this fucking bullshit. I don't want to. I don't want to hear about this. I didn't learn about it 20 years ago when I had my custody of my sister's PS2. I'm not going to do it now. All right. Well, okay, guys, let's get to the end here. Obviously, the Ocarina of Time remake we all knew was coming. It was rumored forever. It leaked months ago. It's real.

[00:43:04] They showed a little teaser of it. You guys go. You're the one who cares about this. Kevin, why don't you start? You're probably the, I don't know. I think he likes it. He's the Ocarina defender. I don't. Well, I don't. I don't even know where I'm at with this. I'm going to play it. Obviously. I do. I think like it's coming out this year, not even giving us a little glimpse of the, of gameplay. I felt like was kind of fucking stupid. I don't know. Am I being, am I being like needy? Am I, am I being a little bitch?

[00:43:32] No, Kevin, because I thought like the dumbest thing in the world was you're not going to show like the forest or anything like that. And then I'm like, okay, I hate watching the footage for extended periods. That's why I'm going to get into that later. But I scanned that, that tree house they did afterward. Oh, maybe they're going to play some Zelda guys. They did not play some Zelda. They ain't playing no fucking Zelda on that. They didn't show gameplay during the direct. They're not going to play it there. No way. So no, they were, they were, they were out of line.

[00:43:59] You can't be shown off the most acclaimed game in history with getting a remake without footage. Yeah. Especially, especially when it's coming out this year. I don't know. And it's not even, it's not about like seeing the gameplay. I more want a sense of what to expect with this because I want so fucking bad for them to like get weird with it and like really overhaul this game because I just, I can't like really get that excited about playing basic ass Ocarina of Time again. Just because it's prettier.

[00:44:29] I want them to like, like really like reimagine it and do something fucking cool with it. And I really think they have to, I think, I think it's, it's going to be a bad look if, if they don't and they just say, Hey, yeah, look at the fucking beautiful lighting we have and like all of the same stories and like re-recorded dialogue. I don't think like, I'm not saying there's not a market for that, but that's not going to make this special. I agree 100%.

[00:44:57] Also, I do think they should have shown gameplay and some people don't feel that way, but like at summer game fest, they blew out final fantasy seven revelation and that's not coming out till next spring. This is coming out this year and they didn't show us anything. So I don't know, man. Like it is weird. I know nobody's going to believe me, but I swear to you, I am actually legitimately interested

[00:45:26] in this because I don't talk about this enough. One of the things that I don't like about Ocarina because it's kind of low on the list of, because there's a lot of things I don't like about Ocarina, but on there as well is that I don't like the way that game looks. I never have even leading up to it in magazines and shit. I always look at screenshots and I'm like, this looks kind of ugly. And then the game comes out. It's locked to 20 frames a second, which I know people like to try to normalize that. Oh, it's what you had to do back then. No, it isn't.

[00:45:56] No, it fucking isn't. Okay. Sorry. That game ran like shit and they knew it. And I've never liked the character models. I don't like the way Link or Impa or Zelda or anybody looks in that game. It's just not a visually appealing game to me. This has a chance to fix that on switch too. So that's like always been a big hurdle for me. So if we have a visual style that I like, and again, I know people are making their snap judgments.

[00:46:23] We saw one little snippet of footage. We don't know anything about what this game is going to look like. I can't really make any judgments there. However, it's already more appealing to me than the N64 game ever was. So now, like you said, Kevin, now I have to hope this isn't a one-to-one remake. I have to hope that this is something drastically different because I'm not paying any money for the game I already hate. So if they're doing something different, I'm here for it.

[00:46:52] I will actually play this. But if not, I got to ask. So just when you talk about the like hating the way that the original looked, what did you think about the way that the 3DS remake looked? Did you, was that like much less offensive or did it, was it just a little? Well, yeah, it was less of, it was less offensive. Now I haven't played that version for myself because again, that's just kind of the same game that I already don't like, but I have looked at it quite a bit.

[00:47:21] And yeah, I do think that does look better. Obviously not just a frame rate because it's running at 30, but just everything in that game. Yeah. That's a much better looking version. I know why do people not like that version as much? Do they prefer the, no, I was, I was just curious with the, I didn't like, you know, I've heard you speak at obviously at length about not liking Ocarina, but I just didn't know that that was like such a core component of it. And it's interesting too, because I think like you could get away with that on 3DS, but when

[00:47:49] you, you know, cause I know you've talked a lot about like just Hyrule field beings like so bare and just like this, like giant hub area with not really a lot to do. I think, you know, this is going to obviously look very good. We, we just fucking know that. And I think that if, if Hyrule field is, you know, the same setup, the same density of enemies and the same amount of shit to do, that's going to be like very glaring if it looks really good and that might be awkward. Yes.

[00:48:17] That's why, like, if this, this can't be a one-to-one, I don't believe it's going to be, do you want to call that right now? This cannot be a one-to-one remake. There's no way. I don't think it will either. I don't think so. I would, I would be pissed. Steve. It just can't be. Yeah. I just don't, I don't see it. I don't see any reason to do, you know, links awakening 2019. Sure. Yeah. One-to-one remake. That makes sense. That would not make sense for this. There's just don't do that, please.

[00:48:43] I just think there's like, there's a long spectrum between like we have tweaked it so that it doesn't feel as empty and doing something like really fucking interesting and really cool and like really like re-imagining it from the ground up. And I think if it's further to that for, you know, even if they're like, well, it felt empty. So we've added more enemies and we've done like a little bit of this and like this, these fucking flourishes and added these trees and like change the locations around a little bit. Like that's not enough. No, I don't think.

[00:49:10] No, they need to over the severely overhaul. Well, they already severely overhauled the graphics. We know that, but severely overhaul the way that game flows and works. And that's the only way I'm going to buy this. Okay. Would you buy? Okay. Steve, would you buy this if it was one-to-one? Would you still get it? Oh, probably. Kevin. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I will play this.

[00:49:39] Like it's, it's just too, like, it's too much of a like thing to not play. Even if I'm like fucking pissed off about what it is, but I will play this no matter what. Okay. Cause, cause even there's a lot of awkward things in the original game, even if they just quality of life plus graphics. I mean, even that's an improvement to me. They can't. It's gotta be more than that. Like I do like the original game. It just, I really want more out of this.

[00:50:08] You know, I'm not, I'm not going to like, if this is a, if this is a one-for-one remake, it's not like I'm going to like play it for 15 hours and just like loathe my time the entire time. It's just going to be incredibly fucking disappointing. Yeah. That's, that's going to be me. So I'm not gonna, I'm not going to bother if it's one-to-one I'm out, but yeah. Okay. Not again, not a super great direct, pretty good. Definitely some juicy stuff. State of play in a second.

[00:51:00] All right. We're back. It's state of play time. Like I said, most of the stuff here wasn't particularly exciting for me, but I thought it was a very good show. Like again, there's a reason why they wanted to show this at theaters and tell everyone two weeks ahead of time that this was happening. I totally get it. And they delivered on that. Um, so yeah, I thought this was a good show, even though nothing here really got me too hot, Steve. And I thought this was a okay presentation.

[00:51:29] That could have been a good presentation if they didn't treat us like children. I don't need you to come out and tell us what we just saw. Blow by blow was Wolverine punching guys in the face in the throat with his claws. I saw that. We all saw that for 10 minutes. You don't need to come out and tell me, Mr. President of insomniac, that that's what we just saw. What is wrong with you? This is literally every presentation, including Nintendo directs. Now he does the same shit.

[00:51:57] Not, not for, not for all the biggest games. It's like, then he's only doing that more now. That was not always a thing. I, I feel like that's been a thing since the initial switch reveal in January 17. Maybe, but it's longer now. I don't know, man. I, I also didn't find any of that offensive. I didn't watch this until after it aired.

[00:52:24] So I seen Steve in the discord being like, is this, are they going to show the entire fucking game here? So I was expecting it to be wildly excessive. And then when I watched it, it felt like kind of par for the course for me, especially because they, you know, this is like a big game for them. I don't know. I thought it was fine. Steve. Me too. Wouldn't have even given it a thought if this man didn't just complain about it. You would have given it a thought if it was conquered too.

[00:52:49] I mean, we would say fuck off to all the other conferences and talk about conquered two for two hours. If that's, if that was shown here, that would have been amazing. I'm just saying you all might be biased because you're looking forward to Wolverine and I respect that, but I mean, I think overall I'm always the naysayer about the state of plays. I'm always the one bitching saying it wasn't very good. I think this was, was absolutely better than most. Um, I don't think this was like a fake E3 good.

[00:53:19] Cause I, I have this like built up in my head that we need to have this like summertime week slot to replace E3. Um, and I, I do think that I would have wanted a little bit more pizzazz for a summertime blow out, but as far as state of plays go, I think, I do think which, sorry, contrary to what Steve is saying. I do think they're, they're like cadence of the, of the state of play presentations have has been like consistently getting better over the past few years for the most part. Yeah. Cause when they started doing these, these used to be really bad.

[00:53:48] Remember, they used to be a joke. Like when state of play was on, it's like, okay, we'll see what happens. And maybe like, sometimes we didn't even cover it cause they were terrible. So I just felt like a slog for quite a while. I'm just, I didn't even hate this one. I'm just saying I'm a grown ass man. I've seen a video game before. Anyone who's watching these conferences has played a video game before. I don't need you to hold my hands to cross the street and get ice cream. Daddy. I mean, I'll be, I'll be fine.

[00:54:14] You are, you are so off base on, I don't even know what your problem is right now. This is so weird. I don't understand. I don't understand this at all. I got it. This is a lot of you. We just move on because we're going to get into some switch to welcome tour shit over here. You are. You're that. I don't know if it's that or a little to the left that you've, that is your worst take on fine time. It's kind of vying for both here, but anyway, yeah. Wolverine.

[00:54:43] They started the show with Wolverine. Kevin, I'm glad they hit the ground running. I mean, imagine you're at the theater watching this and boom Wolverine time. That's, that's cool. Yeah, this is a big game and it's, I mean, I'm, I'm not the Marvel guy, but this is a, I think out of anything PlayStation has coming up, this is the biggest thing. Right? Yeah, for sure. First party anyway. Absolutely. For sure. It looked good.

[00:55:09] I don't know if I have anything like particular, particular to say about it, unless you do. I love, and I think I talked about this when we first seen this, but I love how unapologetically bloody it is. And it's like, I, I, especially like how I wish more games had that thing where it's like, you know, he's very like, I'm going to rip your fucking throat out and there's going to be blood everywhere. But it's not like pairing it with needing to be dark and gritty at the same time.

[00:55:38] And I feel like there is a big fucking gap in video games where we don't have that anymore. I want just like needless blood and violence and gore, but without the, like, you know, let us show you how fucking like mature our game is at the same time. I think that's fucking cool. I think that's one of the reasons why I really like Borderlands still is that it is that it's, it's, it's bloody and you blow people to bits and shit. And it's not like this big dark.

[00:56:04] I mean, it's Borderlands is the exact opposite of mature, obviously. So it's like, you know, I love that. Yeah, this is like Mortal Kombat blood. It's not trying to be realistic in any fashion. Just buckets of blood are just flying, slashing people. He's covered in red juice basically the whole time. It's great. I like that they took that approach. And the faces look significantly less shitty than Spider-Man 2 did. So that's really nice as well. Yeah, the Spider-Man 2 faces were not great.

[00:56:34] But, you know, obviously the least of my worries with that game. But yes, they were not, they were not great. And then they went right into their next Marvel property, Marvel Toe Con Fighting Souls. I don't know if I have a whole lot to say here, but the fact that Magneto was revealed was a surprise to me. I figured they wouldn't do Magneto because that character is so Marvel versus Capcom coded. Why would that stop them?

[00:57:03] Because, I don't know, like you want to be different from that game. Obviously, when you're making a fighting game based on Marvel characters, that's the thing you're going to be compared to. So if you do all the same characters that are in those games, people are just going to make direct comparisons to that. If you do like the same roster. I just feel like this past couple months have been, well, not everybody is here, but everyone we could license is here. So. I mean, I don't know, man.

[00:57:33] I, the fact that they're, the characters are playing very differently. They're not doing the same thing that they were in MVC games, which obviously. I'm not expecting to. I'm just saying, like, I wouldn't have. I don't know. I don't know. I'm not a big Marvel person either, but I don't know if I would have went to the store and hinged my entire purchase on. Oh, man. I don't know if I could get away. I don't know if I could buy this if Magneto's not here. It's a character that matters to people who play those games.

[00:58:03] He's kind of like a big deal character within those games. Yeah. That's all. Maybe not like in the grand scheme of like Marvel buying public, but if you play those games, Magneto is like a character you think about. That's all. Yeah. Rayman Legends retold. I feel like we were. This has been leaked for like forever, like one of those horizon zero dawn remastered things. So it's like, just show us already. We know it's real. Yeah. It's being sold with the origins remake too.

[00:58:33] And I hate the Ubi arts styles gone, but I guess that's how we make it look different. In 2020. What year is it? Six. Yeah. 2026. I can't keep track. Time is broken. Look, I'm not buying this day one. We all know why I'm not buying this day one. It'll be $10 in a few months. Yeah. It's Ubisoft, of course, but you are buying Bancho the chef day one. Man, as noted, Dave, the diver liker. I want to play this, but you know, I still need to finish Dave, the diver.

[00:59:01] They're only putting out the in the jungle DLC next week. What does Dave, the diver have to do with anything? That's a, that's what this game is based on. This is the story of the chef from that game. Oh, okay. I had no idea. Oh, no, no. We're going to find out why he's a sushi guy living on an island that Dave dives into and brings him fish for. Oh, I, I, I straight up had no clue.

[00:59:30] I wasn't, I wasn't just asking you the question for the show. Hmm. Steve, why are you saying that? Like leading you on? I legitimately did not know that. Uh, it'll be good. Dave, the diver is good. And one day I'll even talk about it on here for real someday. Yeah. I like, I like it. Aesthetically sushi hip hop. Like that was fun, but I don't know if I'm going to actually play it. I, I I'll have to pull my inner zoomer and watch someone stream it or something. I don't know. Kamari's here.

[01:00:00] It's the game that, uh, oh my God. Gosh, what's Akumi Nakamura. She founded her new studio, uh, unseen after ghost wire. Tokyo came out and fell apart. Well, not fall apart, but you know, everyone's disbanded, but she's running her own studio. Now this is their first game and it looked all right. You know, I still got talked down to after the fact, I know she needs the studio and this it's all going to hinge on this game. I'm sure.

[01:00:29] But I've seen to the game. You are so fucking weird. This is such a, I'm just going to say it. This is a dumb complaint by you. It's dumb. Okay. But later on, later on, we're going to see, uh, what's it, um, shadow played zero. Come on and they're going to have a presentation. So it's clearly they know how to do it. I'm not entertaining. I'm going to come out. This is fucking stupid. I'm going to come out in defense of Steve slightly. Cause I don't, to me, it's not as much of a pacing thing.

[01:00:58] I do enjoy these presentations much more when I'm watching gameplay paired to, you know, getting told what's going on or marketing or whatever. Then I do just seeing somebody standing in front of the camera talking about it. So I will give him that. I get more out of actually like seeing the game at the same time. I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't find it offensive and I don't think it's like this

[01:01:22] like vast misstep, but as a preference, I guess I would, I would, I'll give him that. If you're going to come on and tell me about the game, tell me something else about the game that we, you didn't show us just yet. I would like to never talk about this again. How about, how about that? I mean, holy shit. This is just like, it's almost asinine. This really want to talk about the AI slop shop. That's a tomb Raider legacy of Atlantis. Oh yeah. Yeah.

[01:01:51] Stop me if you heard this before, but the team came out and said they only used AI in the creative and concepting process and no AI generated AI assets are in the final game, which to me doesn't fucking matter. When are they going to get the hint that that's the same thing? If you used it at any point, it is in the game because you used it. I don't know. I don't know what distinction they're drawing here.

[01:02:20] I mean, even just like the term creative and concepting, like out of all of the faces that we probably really, you know, obviously art, but it's like, that's not, that's not, that's not any better. Right? No. And if you, if you can't come up with concepts, why are you making a video game? I don't get it. Yeah. If you don't have a concept for this game, maybe make a different game or take up a different job. I don't know. There's kind of an intrinsic meaning in the word creative.

[01:02:51] Yeah. Yes. It's the exact opposite of creative. I don't, I don't know, man. It's weird. Well, hopefully they cut it the fuck out. Steve, I'm not making a joke. I legitimately do not know the answer to this. They showed something called the lost wild. And I, I legitimately do not know if this is a Jurassic park game or not. Is this just copyright infringement? Jurassic park? No, this is not a Jurassic park game, but let's be real.

[01:03:20] We're all, we're, we're in a area where people are allowed to go and there's dinosaurs. We're all going to call it Jurassic park. We're certainly not going to call it Billy and the clone of source. Big points to yourself. If you got that just now, where, where that came from. Speaking of is Kevin ready for doing awakening, man, I might be, I have, have you guys watched the Dune movies yet? The modern ones. Like I said, I watched the old one from the eighties and it bored me to death. I have not watched.

[01:03:50] Oh my God. You guys, I am. These, these, I will, I, I prefer these movies to, to like over like the original star Wars trilogy. Those two. Wow. These are like nearly on par with Lord of the Rings, which are my, my favorite movies. Wow. Um, like the fucking, I like so good. So I'm, I've really been like chomping at the bit. I want a cool Dune video game.

[01:04:17] And so now they're saying, Hey, uh, this, they're doing a single player part of this. I like, it's, it's a survival game. And I don't know if that's really my, my thing, but I really like the idea of playing a Dune game. So I do want to keep an eye and like, see what the deal with single player is. And if it might be something that will get me. Cause I just want to like fucking run around in the sand with those sandworms and, and like, see it for myself. You guys need to watch those movies. They are so fucking good. I will look for the 4k blue rays or something.

[01:04:47] I will definitely check them out for sure. You keep talking about it. Like I said, I shouldn't let bad memories of that old ass movie from when I was a kid, let me, I've seen, I've never watched that. I've seen clips and it looks like extremely weak, but these are just, there's a sickos movie. So there's these, these are like rich and, and like deep and thoughtful and, and so visually striking. There's only two of them out, right? Cause I, you can probably find a two pack.

[01:05:17] Just do a third one's coming. Okay. Yeah. I should probably. Yeah. I've, I've, I've got the, I've got the 4k blue rays. You can get them in a set and they go on sale semi-regularly. All right. I'll, I'll put them on my Amazon wishlist or something. Me too. Um, I don't know if I have any, a whole lot to say about dynasty warriors three complete edition remastered that I haven't already said that you guys already know. I'm in it's coming in September. As you remember, it was supposed to come out in March or something. It got delayed. I'm sure you guys saw the footage and could see why it was looking a little

[01:05:46] framey even by dynasty warrior standards, but 40 bucks. That's it. $40 MSRP. That's pretty goddamn good. Yeah. I said that when I saw warrior 64, whoever posted like $40 that that's the perfect price for this game. Yeah, man. Just please let it play like the original game. I hope they didn't try to modernize it too much. Like I love dynasty warriors origins, but I want origins to be origins.

[01:06:14] I don't want like dynasty warriors three to play like that, you know? So I hope this just plays the way the original does. I think that would be the best. They showed Oda Musha wave a sword and then they dropped a demo. So we played the demo. We can give our quick impressions. If you want Steve, I did not like it very much. I thought it was pretty boring. First of all, it was stupidly easy.

[01:06:41] Like I never felt at any moment like I was going to die or that anything was going to remotely challenge me. And for a game like this, that just makes obviously the whole thing tensionless, but especially a game like this, because it's like you really want to feel that danger, you know, of demons and the era and guys, you know, cut you up. I'm not saying it needs to be the dreaded dark souls that I don't like. At the same time, things need to be threatening and nothing here is really threatening.

[01:07:09] And so many random things kept happening as I was like pressing the buttons to attack that like, oh, I'm now I'm doing this kill move and now I'm doing this other like Perry and stabbing them, stabbing them in the back. I legitimately felt like when you give a little kid a controller that's unplugged and you're making him think he's playing on the TV while like the adults are playing. That was me. I felt like someone just handed me a controller. I was the stuff was happening on the screen. I didn't really know how it was happening or how it was triggering it.

[01:07:39] So it's like, I don't know. See, that's the thing. I think that's the problem with all these demos. You just kind of show up with a preset character. He already knows how to do things. They probably are going to ease you into that a bit. I would think I don't I'm not super familiar with Onimusha land. I thought the and that's the thing. I thought the demo was fine. I full disclosure, I had to play it on PS5. I was going to. Hey, is there a switch to version since I've been playing everything else on switch to this year?

[01:08:07] No, they're like, no, only PS5 gets this down. Okay, fine. Jeez. Fuck. I'll put it up. I'll play it on their shit. And I thought it was fine. But I also I'm also, you know, big noob. I mean, the older Onimushas are fixed perspective, like Resident Evil type of games from, you know, the early 2000s. So obviously this is nothing like that. So it's not going to play anything like that, which is fine.

[01:08:33] I didn't expect it to play like an old Onimusha, but this just wasn't really that exciting to me. Maybe the game gets harder later on. Maybe there should be a hard mode. Hopefully there's a hard mode when you start the game and you don't have to like unlock it. I don't know. We'll see. Silent Hill Townfall looked fucking sweet. Still looks great. Super interested. Really not much to say there. Just wanted to shout it out because it looked great. Ace Combat 8.

[01:08:59] You know, I've never been the biggest Ace Combat person personally as far as Namco franchises go, but it looked all right. I thought it was weird that there's such a heavy story mode. Like they're really doing this entire like military top gun ass thing. Probably what they think they have to do now. I've wanted to play an Ace Combat for years, so maybe maybe this is the one I've never played one. I don't see why you shouldn't start here for sure.

[01:09:27] I think seven goes on sale on PS4. Now there's a PS5 enhanced version as well for like really super duper cheap, like all the like less than $10. Like maybe maybe you could try that. Guys, I forgot the stuntman franchise existed until they showed this. I legitimately haven't thought about that shit in like 20 years. When's the last time you thought about stuntman?

[01:09:53] Like Andre's, I similarly forgot this was a franchise until I saw in your notes. This is one of the strangest IP revitals to ever happen. Oh wait, this existed once. Yeah, that's right. Because I'm just confused. Saber's working on this one. And do they work, make video games or just concepts of them? Because there was this and the John Wick thing last time. I think they might be confused on what a video game is. I don't know, man. I just never thought like stuntman would be back in our life.

[01:10:24] I guess. I don't know. It looks all right. I don't know. I'm probably not something I'm going to buy, but it looks okay. It'll look good again. The horror game. That shit looks sick. Can't wait. Look better than it did last year. I mean, as good as a game like this looks. Anything for the PlayStation Plus menagerie? Everyone says I should play Guitaru, man. Should I play Guitaru, man?

[01:10:54] I've never played Guitaru, man. Basically out of like, it's one of my stubborn things where everyone says it's so good, so I'm not going to play it. I'm being an asshole. So maybe it is good. I'll play it on Royale with cheese. Please. It's been 20 years. Maybe you can give it a chance now. But it's also a rhythm game, which you know I'm bad at. You know how mad that shit makes me when I'm bad at it? Yeah, I'm not good at those either, but you know. It's going to be there on the. Well, you're the Until Dawn liker. What did you think of the sequel?

[01:11:25] I think this was my surprise winner for this whole state of play. We all know that I fell. Well, I didn't even talk about it, but I fell in love with this when I got the pre-Royale games with my PS5. And you know, this indirect sequel business should be hopefully a treat when I get to it. I like to call that the Rona collection. I forget what they actually called it. Yeah, it was the Rona collection. Yeah, y'all like the God of War shits. Kevin, were you?

[01:11:54] Did this get you? Man, yeah. I'm going to let Steve go first because I'm going to ramble a bit here. Oh, I'm not going to. I don't have anything meaningful to say because we already jumped on me for a few times. I tapped out after five minutes. You are. You are. I don't need to see 20 minutes. I want to play the game. I want to see it for myself. Mr. Don't spoil the game for me is okay with 20 minutes of footage. You are not a good person. Kevin, talk about God of War.

[01:12:24] Oh, so I have to. We all have to remain silent on every little plot point, but it's okay if State of Play comes out and shows us 20 fucking minutes of the first part of the game. I like seeing 20 minutes of this. I'm just saying I did. Then you talk about it since you're not a bad person. Okay. When I first saw Kratos and Atreus, my heart did sink a little bit because I was immediately like, I did not expect we would get another one of these.

[01:12:52] And I don't think we need another one of these because those two games were exceptional. But I just feel like that well is maybe a little bit dry. So when I saw what this actually is, I'm totally into it. And I think this is a great way because those games have such a good foundation to give this a really new vibe and still get something out of those first two games without just rehashing it for a third time.

[01:13:21] I hope they go the extra mile with really mixing up mechanics from the first two games too. I really like the idea of a character just being a large cube of jelly. I thought that was great. That was funny. I have some thoughts about the online discourse. And if you guys, if I'm like off base with this, please tell me. Okay.

[01:13:45] I seen online, like probably like 20 to 30 people talking about, you know, how frustrating it is about, you know, people like bitching about being like, you know, quote unquote wife of war or whatever. Right. It's his wife and she's now the lead character. Mom of war.

[01:14:06] I seen a, yeah, I seen a grand total of one like snapshot on blue sky of like dominoes replied to the Sony Santa Monica account saying like making like a fucking snarky comment or whatever. And it was like pretty like tongue in cheek, but stupid. Nonetheless, I, I did not see a single other comment from anybody talking about, you know, how, how it was stupid. That, that his wife is taking the lead role or anything.

[01:14:36] And I feel like it's so much of the like negative connotation that would have been happening about that was happening from the people talking about it being negative. Does that make sense? Yeah. That's often what happens. It gets caught in a cycle of stupid. Yeah. I don't, I don't think that there, I don't think that there was really any blowback. I'm sure I'm obviously there was going to be some fucking people saying it, right.

[01:15:01] You know, there's always somebody in the corner of the internet saying something, but it seemed like it was like, I see numerous comments about like how, like defending it and like, you know, whatever. And it just didn't even need to be fucking said because it wasn't a problem in the first place. I just felt like it really brought like a lot of negative energy to that discussion. They just shouldn't have just didn't even, it was, it was needless. I don't know. It kind of frustrated me. That's what that shit does.

[01:15:26] We briefly on our pragmata episode talked about the online discourse of people being weird about the little girl robot, which I don't even want to get into here. Um, but like, you know, there's that stuff. I'm sure if I went on Twitter right now, there would be weird ass motherfuckers talking shit about silent hill townfall because it stars a black guy. So like, I don't really want to listen to what those people have to say, I guess. So like, I, I try my best not to really, I mean, sometimes we wade into those waters if we have something to say about it.

[01:15:56] But in these cases, I'm like, those are not people I want to remotely be associated with. So, but do you, do you, do you agree that if like, you know, so many people that are like bringing that into the conversation are like kind of making the problem worse? Yeah. 100%. That's why I try not to give it any oxygen, but there's a lot of people, especially on blue sky. They don't understand that they don't, they think someone's an asshole. They can't just block and move on. They want to talk about it. Yeah. You know, 30 skeets a day.

[01:16:25] And it's just like, you are bringing, I have heard more about this, like in the last two days than I have in 15 years. Because you assholes won't shut up about it. So if you really don't want people, if you really think this is shitty, just don't talk about it. I'm not saying you, you shouldn't say something sucks at the same time. Like there's a limit to this shit. Like shut up already. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. It just really like, you know, obviously I know this is a dynamic. It just really rubbed me the wrong way in this case. Cause I seen this trailer and I was fucking stoked on it.

[01:16:54] I'm like, this is awesome. I'm super excited to play this. And, and then like, that's all I saw about it. And it just felt like it was kind of like killing my vibe a little bit. Yeah. People will do that. But I thought it, I mean, again, I don't even like this shit. I liked the bit of whimsy. I love that she can just double jump. I liked the cube talked. I liked that there was like some levity to this. Personally. As someone who doesn't even play these.

[01:17:20] I was just going to say, Kevin, you gotta, because people out there, they have worse takes than even us. So, you know, don't, don't, don't give them the space. Yeah. Let's not go that far, buddy. I don't know. You do have some pretty bad takes in this segment, buddy. I'm not. Look, I'm just saying you all have, you have had your chances to win the past. Not necessarily today. And I think, and I think history may vindicate me a little bit on this. Some of these. All right. Microsoft in a second.

[01:17:51] All right. We're back. It's Microsoft time. Um, I, you know what?

[01:18:21] I always on this show, we usually praise Microsoft presentations as being pretty good. Despite, you know, Microsoft being Microsoft and always, always fucking up something. Right. But the presentations are always good. And I thought this was pretty good too. Honestly. Man. Okay. Before the show, they had a promo image and we were talking about it.

[01:18:46] And the games in the promo image were gears, like franchises in the promo image were gears of war, halo, Minecraft. What else were there? There were two more. Fable maybe? Was Forza one of them? Did they? Fable was in there. Okay. And I, they might've had Forza horizon six in there. And I was like, imagine like one franchise that wasn't around in the fucking three 60 days. I don't know.

[01:19:16] I like fucking beating on the same goddamn drum we've been beating on for years, but like, you know, and, and it's not like that there was nothing else in here, but there's still like really resting on their laurels. And, and this, I don't know. It just, the problem is they don't do different. So like, obviously Nintendo still has Mario, Zelda, Kirby, et cetera, but they do very different shit with them. We're not doing the same Mario and Zelda Kirby games you were doing the whole time. Right.

[01:19:44] They're always like evolving and doing different things. They don't evolve halo or gears. Those are just what they are. Well, it's halo. Combat evolved. Oh my God. I didn't even campaign evolved. Campaign evolved. Cause you're sitting by yourself in your room with a pudding. Maybe I'll be evolving my campaign by myself. Yeah. Let's just, let's just start at the beginning with gears of war. I mean, I've really never played a gears game.

[01:20:12] So Kevin, maybe you can speak to this. Look good. All right. Well, I'll put my foot in my mouth. Cause I, yeah, I do always give Microsoft shit for like constantly trotting out these same things. I am excited for this game. Um, you know, and I do really like these games. That series did progressively get a bit more and more stale as it moved on. I think an origin story is really going to fit well for this franchise and, and watching this, like it just, it looks, it's got, it's got a bit of a different look. It's got a bit of a different vibe.

[01:20:42] Um, so I'm glad they're doing this. I always want to be playing more gears of war if they're doing something interesting with it. Um, so yeah, I'm, I'm 100% we'll play this day one. Yeah. It looked all right. Um, but we're going to have to play it on Xbox or PC because this reveal came with the news that gears of war E-Day is a Xbox console exclusive. And I think that's very interesting wording, right? They're not saying coming to Xbox and PC.

[01:21:09] They're saying Xbox console exclusive particularly. And there was a PS five version complete and ready to go. According to Jeff Grubb and everybody, everyone was talking about it, but that version is obviously now canceled. And it appears this decision was made pretty recently because there was a version of the E-Day trailer that went up that still included like a PS five logo and shit. And that video is now privated. Can't watch that video anymore. So someone fucked up.

[01:21:40] Look, we've talked extensively guys on this show about what Microsoft can do to get themselves back in the race and console exclusives has to be it. And they finally understand that. But is this the time to do it at like the tail end of Xbox series X? Shouldn't they wait for whatever's coming next? Like Helix to start doing this, Steve, why are they doing it now? Look, this is what I've been saying. They don't want it.

[01:22:09] And it's not Microsoft is new to the business or that stupid, because I am sure somebody in their big bazillion dollar marketing department said, yeah, you know what? Yeah. The best time to try exclusives again would be when we start out with Helix, not right this second. This move tells me they're going to try it for a handful of games, most of which aren't going to be high profile like Gears of War, not get the overinflated numbers they want. And then suddenly the ports are going to appear again.

[01:22:38] And then we'll be right back to where we started. It's weird, Kevin. It's weird to do it now. Now, I mean, I don't know that I agree. I think for me, I feel like my series X is somewhat less of a useless brick sitting in my living room and that's worth something, right? That even, you know, we were talking not too long ago about them doing game pass price decrease.

[01:23:05] Like, I think not, I don't think that they can solely, you know what? I think the biggest market they need to worry about are, is the market that bought the Xbox one, potentially bought a series X and has entirely lost interest. They need to like recapture that market. I think before they can even start thinking about trying to bring in new people, right? And the people who did buy a series X and it's sitting around and they've kind of like

[01:23:32] defaulted to their fucking PC or their switch or their PS five or whatever, or, or just kind of like gradually lost interest. Like you need to really engage those people. And so I think this does go, you know, towards doing that. And it also, I think it's maybe going to make it feel, I think it would feel a little bit. I mean, it's going to feel a little ingenuine either way. And we know that like, they're very big on like thinking about how do we like dig ourselves out of this hole.

[01:24:01] But if it was like, you know, everything is status quo for the rest of the series X and then the time to come out and show off the helix is here and they come on, they say now helix stuff, that's, what's really going to be exclusive. So don't worry about that fucking shit we've been doing for the last 10 years. Now is when you like actually want to buy an Xbox. Like I, I think this is also a step to making that a little bit more organic. So I think it makes sense. Okay.

[01:24:31] I, you know what? I hear you. That makes sense. Obviously as someone who has only ever had a three 60 and hasn't really taken the journey of the last couple of console generations of theirs. Yeah, that does make sense. You do need to make it up to those people somehow before you do a new thing. I get it. That does make sense. I didn't really think about it from that perspective. Next. They did show the fabled fable just called fable guys.

[01:24:56] Is it just me or does this have nothing to do with any of the teasers that we have seen up to this point? This feels like I was looking at it. It looks like a completely different game. Not only does it look like a completely different game. I don't even think this is fable. I mean, I have only played a little bit of fable, so everyone could tell me to fuck off some more, but this feels like it's way up its own ass to be fable. Yeah, I don't. Kevin, this is like this was weird that this isn't even.

[01:25:25] Remember they featured that one girl, right? With like the frizzy hair or whatever, like in a ponytail. She was. Was she even in this? I didn't even see her. Yeah, but they had. They also had the one with like the giant, right? The giant guy. Yeah. A few years ago. The thing is, it's funny you say this because I have actively had this exact thought previously. Like every time we see this game, I don't feel like there's like any through line of what we're actually going to be getting with this. I don't know.

[01:25:54] It's so yeah, you're absolutely right. I think it's just there. I don't know if this game like feels a little bit directionless at this point with what we know about it. Yeah. And I think Microsoft is like we you y'all just need to put this out and that's it. This this just has to come out. So shore this up and put it out. Also, like I think it's extremely funny that fables on PS5 and not Gears of War E day. I don't understand the strategy.

[01:26:23] Either you're having console exclusives or you're not. Why would you put fable on PS5? That's what I'm saying. Like, clearly you could just make these decisions whenever you want. Take a take away fable from PS5. If you really mean it. Yeah. But I mean, fable was supposed to come out a very long time ago. Originally, like we've been seeing this game for fucking years and years and years at this point. The entirety of this fine time. We've been seeing exactly there.

[01:26:52] There is a chance that they are just like locked into a contract. They can't get out of out of with Sony for that. Potentially. I don't know. I mean, you're probably right. I feel like that's the only reason why it's that's happening. Oh, I mean, they were trying to make a statement, obviously, with with Gears like they made a fucking deal of saying, hey, just so you know, this is a console exclusive. And I think if they would have had the opportunity to have that a double whammy with the first

[01:27:18] like two games that are associated with Xbox out of the gate, they would have done it if if they could have. So I'm assuming they couldn't. Yeah, I feel like they're locked into that and they have to do it. It just makes it. It just makes the whole new focus look silly when you have to put Fable on PS5 now, you know? Yeah. Halo campaign evolve. Look cool. I don't. Again, it's Halo. I will probably buy this. It looks good. I just don't know if I have anything super insightful. Kevin, I think you like Halo more than either of us.

[01:27:49] Yeah, I've I don't know. I've played all of the Halos and I was kind of tepid on this originally. Like I've played Halo one on the Master Chief collection a couple times in the last 10 years. So I mean, I'm not like, you know, I do. I'm interested to see it with the graphical refresh, but this is the I think they are. I think they're adding more and trying to change this up based on what they showed here more than I initially thought.

[01:28:17] So I'm more so interested to try this than I was before before the show. I think I am as well. Like at first I was like, well, that's not very exciting. It's just Halo one again. But honestly, it looks it looks really good. Would you know what guys? Sea of Thieves was at the Microsoft show. Who would have thunk it, Steve? I don't know. I think they're finally out of ideas. They're like, make your own island.

[01:28:42] And also here's some basic bitch game modes like cannons on a boat, which is just, you know, like death matches, really. So it's like, I guess I guess we're done, right? No more Sea of Thieves after this. You develop the game now. We're done here over there. We're done here over there. We're done here over there. Yeah, I was just like, okay. I was intrigued by bad magpie. I'm like, oh, guys, there's a lot of fucking shooters here.

[01:29:11] We're going to need to show something for Steve. And this was it. Bad magpie. You're the little asshole crow stealing things. Oh, yeah. Okay. I remember that. Yeah, that was cool. And no, I don't hate that all the games were shooting things. I'm like, there's a lot of these in a fucking row. You guys like, oh, I'm back. Xbox shoots things. Yes, I know they shoot things. Yep. I want to talk about Join Us. And I got a weird fucking take on this one. Okay.

[01:29:38] So this was the game that, you know, it looks like you are likely the cult leader or you're so heavily associated with a cult. And there's like, you know, lots of shooting going on. So you're, you know, this is like invoking imagery of like Waco to me. And I don't know if I have really ever had this. But when this trailer came on and let me let me like upfront saying I'm not saying they shouldn't be doing this and I'm not saying there's anything wrong with this, but my like gut reaction was

[01:30:08] that this like made me uncomfortable and that it was like, it's like, this is like offensive to me somehow. And I don't even know why. I mean, you know, like no video games have I seen where, you know, there's like extremely like graphic or inappropriate shit. Like I don't, that doesn't faze me at all. Something about this just like felt incredibly morbid being like associated with a cult.

[01:30:34] I've watched like a lot of shit about, you know, like documentaries about Waco and Ruby Ridge and like all of that kind of shit. Yeah. So again, I'm not saying I'm not saying this shouldn't shouldn't be a thing or even that I like I think this should be a thing, but I just thought it was interesting that it gave me that gut reaction of like, oh, this is like this is kind of fucked up because I never I don't get like this is kind of fucked up with anything. Yeah, that is that is a weird feeling to creep up. I don't know.

[01:31:03] Maybe it's because I'm I have a fucked up life anyway. I'm like, you know what? You know what? When this game would have been perfect, you guys right after playing I am Jesus Christ. Not that next spring is super far away. I'm not going to make that complaint like I usually do, but I'm like just just the past thought like that would have been a great where you're a real cult leader would have been like a great palate cleanser for I am Jesus Christ. Yeah, this looked yeah, I definitely like stuff like this.

[01:31:32] I love there was a I believe this was very early in the previous creative endeavors life. Steve, I played a game called sagebrush in indie game. And this was a game where you get to a campground of a cult that used to be there. Everyone's dead now. And you're just going through the cabins and trailers and kitchens and everything and finding out what happened there.

[01:32:01] That shit was one of the best indie games I've ever played. So I really like cult stuff. So maybe I would play this game. I don't know. But yeah, it is. It is uncomfortable material. Kevin, I do understand why it wouldn't be for everybody. I mean, look, I straight up don't like I don't want to play like desert storm games or you know what I mean? Like I'm not saying that makes me uncomfortable, but it's just like it definitely there is some topics where I'm like, I don't I don't know if I want to do that. So I get it. Yeah.

[01:32:31] Okay, good. I just I felt so weird because I've like never had that. I don't have that reaction to like any media ever. Yeah. It's caught me off guard. Yeah, I hear you. Yeah. So cinema was interesting. I guess it they're taking they're doing like a action take on Hellblade because why not? It I did. I thought Hellblade was done. Like I felt I really felt like Hellblade 2 kind of came and it went and nobody really noticed.

[01:32:59] Like the only I felt like the only time that people really were noticing that game were like because they announced that early on. Right. Like they showed footage. I think of that when they first showed off the Series X as game awards like fucking this is a lot of years ago. And they kept hyping it up, too. Yeah, but nobody gave a shit when that game came out. I didn't think I just I was surprised to see Hellblade anything again.

[01:33:24] Well, I think we kept saying when they were hyping, it's like, does anyone care that much about Hellblade? Why? Why are they trying to make Hellblade 2 such a big deal? You know, and certainly it wasn't really a big deal. But I do think it's interesting that like they're basically taking the assets of Hellblade 2 and making action game out of it, which is like a good way to recycle if you want to use that word. So that's that's interesting. OK, we have to talk about Crazy Taxi World Tour.

[01:33:53] We found out a lot about it as as the days have went on. But what was your initial impressions, guys? Tell me. I don't know about this one, you guys. OK, Kevin, were you like. All right. You guys you guys were talking shit the other day, but as soon as the offspring song came on, I'm like, I'm so glad they got that like that like fucking needs to be there.

[01:34:19] I did. I mean, because they didn't like you didn't see any gameplay in in this. Right. But I was like, I don't know how I feel about the art style. Like, should this be cell shaded or something? I can't quite put my finger on why it doesn't really seem like it fits. And I mean, it is like the art style of, you know, Crazy Taxi, Crazy Taxi, too, is probably almost hard to, like, figure out how to, like, properly fit that vibe in modern times.

[01:34:48] But I didn't know that the, like, art style that was here was necessarily doing it for me. But we then found out more about this game and seen gameplay after this. Yeah, it's OK. You know what? Let's just get to the elephant in the room. Shortly after this reveal, Crazy Taxi World Tour appeared on Steam for wishlisting. And as everyone knows, Steam lets publishers disclose any and all AI usage.

[01:35:17] There's always like a section for it. So here's what it says for Crazy Taxi World Tour, and I'll read it verbatim. OK, quote, the developers describe how their game uses AI generated content like this. At Sega Corporation, we utilize generative AI as a support tool for developers aiming to provide better content to our users and enable developers to focus more on creative tasks.

[01:35:43] We have used such generative AI support tools during development of Crazy Taxi World Tour. No AI was used in reference to the performers in the game. End quote. Guys, what the hell does that mean? Why is this so vague and practically mealy mouth? Like, doesn't this hurt them even more than if they just said, Steve, hey, we use Gen AI in the game for some billboards. Like, just say it at that point.

[01:36:12] It's not great, Andre. And even if I could be that guy from Giant Bomb, I don't know all their names, like who's on there and said, yeah, I'm still going to play Crazy Taxi when he's standing right there with the Sega person and pretend that's still OK. We all saw the footage. It's shit. That's no Crazy Taxi. They need to tear it down and try again for me to even consider this. Footage doesn't look great. Gotta tell you. That's dope.

[01:36:42] The car stops on a dime. That's shitty. I don't like it. You know what it was for me? I just saw the barreling through traffic of the cars just fly like they're paper mache, like out of the way. Like that was just like. Yeah. Nothing's there. I feel like that's the whole point of the game is weaving in and out of traffic, right? So I don't know if you want to make burnout, then make burnout. But that's that's not what I want here.

[01:37:11] But we'll see. I'm not completely out on it. OK, I will. I will. I'm not saying they're going to buy it, but I'm not like completely up. Fuck this. We will see. I'm very, very cautiously like still keeping an eye on it, but I'm not really hopeful. I would really like a demo for this game. It would be really good to be able to not pay anything, see how it actually feels and get a sense of what's going on here. Yeah. When you say what the hell does this mean?

[01:37:41] I mean, when they're talking about enable developers to focus on more creative tasks, you know, is that implying that this was like like just like nuts and bolts coding? Because I don't fucking buy that. I don't I don't think that you like I don't think AI is in a place where you could like, you know, I feel like the creative tasks are like what could it be then? What are what are they implying that they were using?

[01:38:06] If they're talking about like testing collision and doing QA and stuff, then just literally just say that. That they're not saying what it is is the problem. So, yeah. So I don't know. I can only assume that means but they also didn't go the route of saying concepting and early ideas. So they didn't say that either. Right. So I don't know what the fuck this means.

[01:38:30] I do think and I don't want to like entirely, you know, drag us down the rabbit hole from what I've seen. I think it's I don't think it's just like, you know, like the blue sky blue sky crowd that this is like irritating. I think the general population for like art things like people, people do get a sense of like this, this, like this. It's like an uncanny valley thing almost like people literally don't like this. I don't think in general.

[01:39:00] I think with art things is a different conversation than just like asking questions or whatever, because I don't think like the general public is against that as much as, you know, as playing a video game, knowing that AI was used to make it like generally people don't like that. And I've heard that from people just in my personal life that aren't like, you know, they know I'm interested in video games and they're interested in them, but they're not like, you know, extremely interested in them and they don't like it.

[01:39:30] Which leads me to believe, you know, I think that there was a period of time six months ago, a year ago when these things were starting to get implemented and developers didn't really know what the reception would be. And they were too titillated by the thought of it saving like tons of time and money. But I think we are going to see this phased out to a degree. Maybe that's like wishful thinking, but I don't think it's just like a small but vocal minority saying we don't like AI in games.

[01:39:56] I think it's a big enough thing that it's going to cause them financial losses and get reevaluated. I think they wouldn't just do it, Steve, just because they don't want this conversation anymore. When any game does this, even like Expedition 33 and everything, it just it becomes the conversation. I don't think they want that. No one really wants that over time. And I don't know, they all keep promising us that this bubble is going to burst soon.

[01:40:24] So maybe this year. Please hurry up. I just don't know that I think that conversation hurts them. I think we like the three of us are seeing that conversation a lot because we're paying attention to it. I think if you know, I think if 343 came out and they put out a fucking similar statement to this, I don't think it's going to make like the people who are going to play Halo were probably already going to play Halo.

[01:40:53] So I don't know if like that conversation is impacting them as much. But I think I think as time moves on that that there will they will see a like measurable degree of losses of people, especially with stuff more like this. Right. I agree. Yeah. And like Indies will obviously be like if you're Indie, if you're an Indie game, you use AI. Don't even fucking bother. Right. Like you are done. Yeah.

[01:41:19] You know, if it comes out that like, you know, Mina the Hollower used AI. It's like it's fucking over. Right. So don't even don't even fuck with it. I legitimately. So when they showed this green ass controller, I just literally thought of you, Kevin. I was like, this is this is your shit. I know. I'm a fucking sucker. I keep like for years bitching about how like Xbox is so weak as a brand and they've pissed me off and they keep relying on the same shit.

[01:41:49] And then I seen that controller and I'm like, I'm fucking getting one of those as soon as I can. I really like it. Steve, you're going to you're going to get him one for Christmas. Maybe a controller, but they have the console, too. And we went over the price increases and things. It just feels like a waste when you're trying to tell everyone Helix is coming soon. You guys. Yeah, that's another thing. That's something I didn't mention. We were talking about the exclusives. Nobody's going to go out and get a Series X now.

[01:42:17] I don't think, especially with all the like with the prices the way they are, you know, it'll help for existing people, but they're not trying to sell. They can't sell new people for, oh, play Gears of War E-Day. This is probably the only way they can do that, right? They some people will buy this because it's like a fucking limited edition translation thing. So because I don't think they're selling any Series X is right now. So this might be this probably literally was driven by like we need to sell some console.

[01:42:47] Let's go after the collector market. I just wouldn't have bat an eye at all. If, you know, prices trended down like they normally do, like, oh, it's a. $300 Xbox Series X. Who? How cute that that'll be fun for people. But this is like not that. Not at all. Did you guys see that game? Magicians the Devil's Deal? That shit looked crazy. Yeah, I loved it. That was so cool.

[01:43:15] You can always get me with like stage show magic show, like old timey carnival ass. Like you can get me with that shit. So I was into it and it scratched that itch. It looked a little bio shocky. Right. I feel like that motif that like kind of gameplay is kind of coming back around. It's having like another moment. So, yeah, you have my interest on that one. That look. That look cool. They also showed Castlevania Belmont's Curse. We got a much better look at it.

[01:43:46] I don't know. I mean, y'all, you already know what I think. So what? I mean, this didn't change your mind at all because this looks fucking cool. It does. I think this looks good. I did not like it. I still don't like it. In fact, I would say this extended look made me like it even less. This is no different to me than it honestly doesn't look any different to me than any other indie game trying to be Castlevania.

[01:44:15] Just it has the name just because it has the name doesn't make it so. I'll believe my eyes and ears before I believe the name on the box. Sorry. I don't. I just this is not it. I feel like I'm going to get ripped apart for this, but then like why bloodstained then? Because you guys like that. I never thought aesthetically that looked good. Right. So why are you open to that? Not this.

[01:44:41] You looking at that game, just looking at footage of bloodstain, you you don't even have to play it. You can see that plays like Castlevania. That plays like Castlevania. You don't have to like the way it looks. You don't have to even like the gameplay, but that looks like the game we're looking for. Right. With the movement and the jumping and the way the weapons work and the sub weapons and everything. This gameplay does not look like Castlevania. You can tell.

[01:45:11] I mean, I don't think I have to put my hands on it to tell that. I'm calling it now. I because you were into this, right, Steve? When we first seen it. I think I still I'm a bit more optimistic than Andre's, but I also realized that this could go south. But I'm optimistic enough to say I should play this. And I think Andre's take is going to age poorly, but I guess we'll see. I hope I'm wrong. I hope we have a cool new Castlevania game to play.

[01:45:41] I just don't think this looks very much like one and gameplay wise feels very much like one. Again, I have obviously I haven't put my hands on it, but I don't think I really have to. I can see what they're doing there, and that's not very Castlevania to me. But, you know, maybe I'm just an old I'm the person who doesn't like the way Symphony of the Night feels because I think that looks like rich man's Castlevania. I want the old dungeon.

[01:46:09] I want like barbarian ass with a whip and like the Halloween shit, you know, Symphony of the Night doesn't have that. So I've always been a person that's like this. This looks too beautiful. This looks like there's all sorts of chandeliers and mirrors and, you know, very primping proper rooms and white satin and stuff. And I'm like, yeah, some of that stuff is in Castlevania. But like the entirety of Symphony of the Night looks like that. And I'm like, that's not very. Nah, we need some.

[01:46:38] We need like a where's the big bat, right? Where's Frankenstein and Igor and shit? You know, that's Castlevania to me. Symphony of the Night had the big. Did you like the Netflix series? Oh, I never. I never watched it. Because that's really like I watched the first two seasons of that. I don't I don't even actually know what came out beyond that. This really like feels like it's invoking the Netflix series aesthetic to me. Yeah, maybe. Maybe that's part of it that I don't. I mean, Castlevania.

[01:47:06] I'm not saying Castlevania has ever changed art styles before. Like, obviously, Rondo of Blood took a more anime approach to things right at some point in the early 90s. And that's still cool. That's still very Castlevania. But, you know, just not really shit. I would even say Castlevania 64 looks the part more than more than this Belmont's curse. But we'll see. Maybe I'll be big wrong. Maybe it'll be the biggest fuck I was wrong in show history. But right now, I'm not really feeling. Yeah. Vivarium. Vivarium.

[01:47:35] I don't even know if I'm saying that right. Vivarium. Curious to see Vivarium. Right. Because it's like a terrarium. Yeah. Yeah. I thought that looked interesting. There's obviously some farming stuff going on, but I think that would be especially interesting if this is like truly a farming simulator. If this is, you know, I think that would be a cool hook for this kind of thing. Yeah. I think that's the only way that could be interesting. I think that's like the only like otherwise I probably wouldn't wouldn't really care too much.

[01:48:05] Everyone ready for Spyro apparently. I did not really. That's not really something I saw coming. I know Tommy and Grant are. I don't know about everyone else. Lord. Oh, my God. And they're doing a series. How serendipitous. Their views are going to go through the roof now. I mean, it's for them. I don't know if it's for the rest of us.

[01:48:29] Neo Geo Go definitely got a bump when they announced that like that new AES console with like the tin cartridges. The thing that costs a thousand dollars. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Our shit definitely went up a little bit. So you never you never know. I don't know, man. Does really people checking for Spyro? I guess so. Huh? That's that seems like a core millennial thing. Yeah. It just seems like I don't know. It's I feel like that that would have made sense 10 years ago.

[01:48:58] Yeah, right. This feel. Well, because that's when they were doing the trilogy and shit on PS4. So like maybe by the way, I have that trilogy on Steam. I should really give it a go. I don't hate Spyro by any means. I just don't know if I'm like really. Oh, man. Yes. Spyro. Can't wait. They show Clockwork Revolution for the 17th time. And I man, I feel like we were rooting for you. This show was rooting for you this entire time. Clockwork Revolution.

[01:49:26] I feel like, Steve, we have finally reached rock bottom. I think it's last showing. We were like, I don't know about that dialogue. And now we're here. And I'm like, I think I'm out. This is a fuck. I was wrong years in the making, because the first time they were out there with their cute little in due time released in like, oh, yeah, this looks great. And then that last time where they were out there with the dollar. Okay, maybe it's only a little bit of that. And it's better in the actual game. Then we saw this. I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, no.

[01:49:56] You're all on your own now. Kevin, are we all out on Clockwork Revolution? I did not like this the first time we seen it. I fucking hated it more. Like that humor is so fucking stupid. Like, I hope this fails just to like set an example, honestly. Like, and they like treated this like this, like mic drop moment. Fucking Matt Booty walks out with his soulless fucking face and, you know, like treats it like it's well.

[01:50:26] This is an exclusive to you lucky dogs. Like, I'd rather cut my dick off than play this game. It looks fucking terrible. Holy shit. Goddamn. I loathed it. That. Wow. I'm surprised. Okay. So I didn't hate it that much. I'm definitely not interested anymore. By the way, maybe it will fail because it is now a Xbox console exclusive. Yeah. If anything. If anything was going to benefit from being on anything, it would have been that. And now it's. Yeah.

[01:50:56] They can have it now. Y'all keep it guys. Yeah. Then they ended with Call of Duty Modern Warfare 4, which obviously we don't really have anything to say about it. But did you guys think it was so fucking embarrassing that they did like the fake ass, quote unquote, Asian font for the four? That like, what do you like? Come on. That's like straight out of the 80s. Like, I don't know, dude. That was like, I didn't know we still did that.

[01:51:25] We don't. I mean, they're doing it. That they asked the AI to make it for them. That was mad cringe. That was really cringy. You guys have given me shit for doing the fast forward thing before, and I did not fast forward through any of this fake E3 season other than when I seen Call of Duty. I turned it off. I'm like, oh, let's make sure there's nothing else beyond this. So I didn't see the fake shitty for. They always end with Call of Duty. Yeah, you have to now.

[01:51:53] They didn't really say anything about it not being. Well, I guess they didn't just splash it on Game Pass day one. Like, well, they can't now. No, no, they can't. But they probably didn't make mention of it. They just quietly didn't have that part like they usually do. That would have been a pretty good segment, actually, if they came out and they're like, hey, just so you know, Game Pass subscribers fucking not getting this shit for free. Yeah, fuck off. Give money. $70 for you.

[01:52:20] I know you're not used to paying anymore, but, you know, pony up the $70. All right. One more quick break and then Summer Game Fest to wrap it up.

[01:53:00] We're back. It is Summer Game Fest time. Guys, let's just say it up front. This was great. This was easily the best Summer Game Fest since they started doing it. And on a personal level, this blew my tits clean off. This was a great show. This is definitely the best show of this whole past week, in my opinion. Look, what do we all? What do I say at least every year? Get rid of the free to play filler. Get some games that look distinctive from each other.

[01:53:30] Keep the show moving. Do what I want. Why are you like this now? Okay. But they did all those things and they even had games I wanted to play. So, you know, this was a good show. Great show. It was great, Kevin. Man. I honestly, I like dread Summer Games Fest because I always watch it for the podcast and it feels like a fucking slog every year. And not only did it, it didn't just like go up a few notches.

[01:53:59] This felt like an entirely different show and like very worthy of being in my mental fake E3 week, which I think is a spot like that spot needs to be filled. However, I'm still going to bitch about Summer Games Fest a little bit because there's some janky fucking shit going on here.

[01:54:19] I really tried watching that stream in the hours after it was finished and you could only rewind the live stream back to the point where it ended and Day of the Dev started. You could watch it in their fucking vertical orientation YouTube live. You could watch it in like the described video one, but you couldn't watch the fucking normal one.

[01:54:42] And then finally, when it was working and the actual video was uploaded to YouTube, there was like 20 minutes of severe audio delay. And this wasn't like this was an issue with the video because at a certain like the audio was entirely fine. Then it stopped and it was off off. And then like 20, 25 minutes later, then it was fixed. And I really think if you want to say watching live also had audio desync issues on YouTube specifically. It did, man.

[01:55:12] And if you like, I guarantee that some publishers were pissed off about that because if you want to treat this like a big premiere show and you're convincing publishers to like let you show these trailers, you don't want to have your fucking trailer that you've been saving in your back pocket on something you've been working on for years, have a fucking like two or three second audio delay on it. That sucks. Yeah. Like, and it was very early on. It started from Resident Evil Veronica. It was like the first game.

[01:55:42] It didn't like crop up later. It was like from the get go. See, when I was watching, it was like probably an hour in like it was, it seemed fine. And then about an hour into maybe hour 20, hour 30 or so, it was like really fucking bad. Oh, and, and so when I watched it, then at the very, like it caught up, it was fine. And then at the very end of the show where they were both on stage being like, Hey, day of the devs is coming or whatever. Then it like ended. And then it just like replayed like a few seconds of them saying the same thing again.

[01:56:12] So I don't know. Like YouTube as well. I know you're doing a live show, but like figure the fucking shit out beforehand. They're, they're putting money into it. Like get the tech side done. It was weird because none of the other SGFs have had this problem with specifically this one. Like sometimes weird shit happens during the game awards because everyone watches that. But this was like the first time their servers like went kablooey. It was, it was weird. Um, you know, what was the best one to watch? And it still had a little bit of problems because it would still hitch every so often. Believe it or not. Steam.

[01:56:43] The broadcast on steam was like pretty stable. It didn't have any audio desync. And it was like, cause I don't think a whole lot of people know that they do that on steam. So like that was, so next time, maybe even game awards, if it broadcasts on steam, maybe we should like try that first just because like, Oh yeah. Except now the secret's out and we're going to ruin that too. We're not nearly popular enough to ruin that. So tens of people are going to fucking crash that steam video now. God damn it.

[01:57:12] Again, it wasn't perfect. It did have some hitches, but like it was the best. It was the most stable one in my opinion. Anyway, let's get to that beginning, uh, with resident evil Veronica because wow. Wow. Just Veronica, huh? Not code Veronica anymore. Okay. I guess, uh, obviously I'm here for this. This is my favorite resident evil game period.

[01:57:36] And I hope it gets a good re-imagining much closer to resident evil two remake than resident evil three remake. And of course what I want the most is a remake of the original, but beggars can't be choosers. This is still great, but the entire footage of this was from a first person perspective. Do you think that was just for the trailer, Steve? Or do you think that's actually going to be the game?

[01:58:01] Well, I thought it was going to be for the game, but then a few hours ago, I'm sorry. I didn't put this in. They did talk to IGN and said, Oh, we just did that for the trailer. This is going to be in third person like the original. Okay. Well, that solves that. That's good. But see, this is a big blank spot for me in the series. Like I had no idea what was going on in the trailer until the name popped. I didn't hate this money.

[01:58:24] I'm getting this fucking game, but I was not picking up on this was code Veronica, which means I'm asking you, were you sitting there losing your goddamn fucking mind going it's here. Goddamn. Finally, it's code Veronica. Goddamn. Well, I didn't necessarily know it was code Veronica, but I knew it was re engine because it had that look, you know? So I knew it was re engine. I just wasn't sure exactly what it was. I thought I thought it definitely could have been re nine DLC or something.

[01:58:52] I didn't really know that first. Yeah. So I don't know. Kevin, are you? I mean, I know you don't play these, but. Yeah. I wanted to ask you specifically about if you, if you guys know anything with re engine, cause this like, and I'm like, I know that it can look very good. This looked that old lady was very graphic. Ricky. That looks extremely fucking fantastic.

[01:59:15] Um, which I have not, I mean, even, even like, like footage of any of the recent resident evil stuff that I've seen has not looked this good. Are they, have you heard anything about what's going on with that? Like this, this looked fucking incredible. I think re nine looks basically as good as this. Wouldn't you say, Steve? I mean, I think it looks like that. I think it's pretty close. I, I mean, it was, it was a bunch of dark rooms. We didn't see too much else, but yeah. I would say so.

[01:59:43] I think they're having a lot of faith in the re engine because I keep bringing up the switch to day one ports, but then later on they did a monster hunter ascendance thing. And they were like, Oh, by the way, we're working on it for switch to like you. People are nuts. If you're just doing it. But okay. Yeah. No, I'm, I'm, I'm excited. Yeah. This is obviously, like I said, it's my favorite resident evil game. So hopefully it can get a good take.

[02:00:09] Take there's some stuff in the original co-veronica that is maybe not okay today that might get them canceled. So they're going to have to, I think they would write around that. No, no. Well, they should still have it because it's a central plot point, but they'll have to handle it a bit differently. That's all. But it has to be in the game because that is the, that is the story. Got it. But anyway, they showed Jen Atlas.

[02:00:37] We finally know the name of this game. I'm sorry. I can't remember the guy's name who created eco shadow of the Colossus, et cetera. But this is his new game. They showed it a little bit. What a couple of years ago, maybe just a teaser. It's called Jen Atlas. Now, absolutely insane. This shit looks so good. You know what? You know what I loved about it the most? This is kind of weird. Maybe I love that they're shooting guns. And like getting dirty and shit and doing like regular video game stuff.

[02:01:07] Cause it's not this esoteric dream, like, like, like eco or something like that. Or last guardian where it's like this world. I mean, it is that, but then you're also, you're also shooting fucking machine guns on top of it. So you have this very real world thing that you're doing, which is great. I think that's like a good way to like augment his usual flavor of like art and video game in my opinion.

[02:01:32] So, yeah, I think that's like, I'm obviously very much looking forward to this, Steve. I think it looks really good too, but I kind of wish they pulled an Octopath Traveler and just called this thing robot. Cause this thing was called Project Robot and now it's Jen. Okay. Full disclosure. When I plugged this into the notes, the spellcheck insisted this game was actually called Genitals. So I don't know, maybe not the best name.

[02:02:02] I mean, if you type Gen Atlas a few times, it'll get off the genitals at some point. I would imagine. I think, I think as far as fine time lore is concerned though, it's known from as genitals from here on out. Yeah. It's, it's called genitals. I can't wait to play genitals. Yeah. This looked incredible. And I love Shadow of the Colossus is obviously a very different thing. I feel like this might, it's early to say, but this might like channel what's so special about that too. I don't know. I'm very excited for this.

[02:02:32] It looks great. This looks, couldn't, couldn't be better. It's doing all the right stuff. Stranger than heaven was finally showed off like a big gameplay reveal and Tupac was there. Tupac? Tupac. I mean, look, we already know Snoop was in the game, right? Right. But like, I, I don't know, man.

[02:03:01] That's, that's a thing. I almost don't even know what to say. I just wanted to say the word Tupac out loud a couple of times, just to, just to stamp it. It doesn't feel right. It's pretty funny. I, I mean too, when, cause like Snoop Dogg was so hot and heavy on NFTs. And so when they bring him out on stage and he's like, no, this is, this is cool. This is like God, our blessing. It's like, well, maybe that's okay. Doing more harm than good. I don't know.

[02:03:27] Well, the next day, because I'm not behind, I am behind on how all this works. Tupac's estate is not Tupac's family. So it's a, it's a bunch of corporations making these decisions, which means if he's going to be in this game with songs, I think that might be, let's test out our new AI toy to make all that happen. And it's gross when you, I don't know. I already think it's gross when you're puppeteering a dead person to be a live person and it's

[02:03:57] in a thing. Okay. They showed Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the last Ronin. And I'm sure this is very interesting because I'm sure that a lot of people remember like about a decade ago, maybe a little more platinum games made a turtles game like this overhead ish beat them up thing. It was not very well received and it got delisted pretty quickly. Like within a year, I didn't even get a chance to buy it even for cheap.

[02:04:25] And those days are apparently now forgiven because platinum games is now doing this TMNT, the last Ronin game. And I know this isn't going to happen, Steve, but I'm going to beg and plead for it anyway. Please God, let this be rated mature. Please give us a rated mature turtles game. That would be so fucking sick, especially with last Ronin. That would be, I know they're not going to let it do that, but they should, they really should.

[02:04:54] I think we'll get to T. Remember a long time ago when we did our Ninja Turtles show and we said this was actually coming from THQ Nordic? Boy, is my face red. Platinum games now, baby. I just hoping it's good. I mean, we already have a precedent set for likable turtles games again. So, you know, let's keep it going. Well, platinum games did prove they can still make a good game.

[02:05:20] I mean, Ninja Gaiden 4 came out last year and, you know, people received it well. So that seems to be a platinum ass platinum game. So they still have the juice. So that's good. So hopefully. Did you ever play their Transformers Devastation? You ever play that? Not me, no. It was fun. It was a fun little game. Gundam Rogue Orbit was interesting because on one hand, it's great to see a Gundam game

[02:05:47] that isn't like the most unapproachable Byzantine piece of shit for nerds that you've ever seen, because that's usually what Gundam games are, unless they're Dynasty Warriors Gundam. So that's good. But what isn't good is that this looks like Uncharted with robots. And I don't get that. I get that the series is often like melodramatic to a fault, but I don't know if cinematic action

[02:06:16] game, Western action game is like the way to express Gundam to the masses. Maybe it is, man, but I'm really not that interested, I guess, if it's going to be like that. Yeah, I don't know either. I mean, I'm kind of looking at this extremely hard game, too, you know, because eggs, it was cute, but Mario 64 had an accidental misspelling where, you know, it's the stream extremely hard game.

[02:06:45] And, you know, it's going to be streamer bait and I don't have any friends to play it with because. Streamer bait games are a big deal now. What's that one? Everyone likes a repo. Is that is that one? Yeah. I feel like that's a streamer bait game or the one where like it's a four player climbing game, too. You see that one? Everyone's trying to climb the mountain peak peak. Yeah. That's like a streamer bait game.

[02:07:12] I guess bait sounds like a pejorative, but it doesn't have to be just fuck off fun multiplayer shit. Guys, Star Wars Galactic Racer looked fucking hot. This game looks amazing. I you guys know I'm like very skeptical of anything claiming to be an arcade racer nowadays because we haven't really done that in 20 years. But Kevin, this really looks the part. This game looks fucking sick. Yeah, I've been thinking about this game a lot in the last like couple of months.

[02:07:41] So I was very excited to see more there. There's the little kid in me is so excited to see like pod racing with modern graphics. Dude, it looks so good. I'm so fucking excited for this. Yeah, I know. I'm this is day one for me, too. I wasn't. I mean, like I was like 17 when Phantom Menace came out and I remember going to the theater to see that and I thought it was OK. I'm not a hater of that movie. It's fine.

[02:08:08] But the pod racing stuff, I mean, shit, I was a teenager and that shit was like, oh, man, this is the coolest shit I've ever seen. So when like the N64 games and shit came out, I was like, oh, of course. Yeah, I got to rent that shit. And I had a ball with those games. And then Sega had like the arcade version, you know, of the pod racing game. Man, this looks better than both of those looks really great. So I hope it's good. So, Steve, Virtua Fighter Crossroads. We have a name.

[02:08:39] Look, I'm not the biggest Virtua Fighter guy in the world, but I think it's nice that they finally someone out there finally took the time to make a good Mortal Kombat Mythologies game. This looks way better than that. You know, that is interesting, right? Because they are taking a story first approach to it. I feel like if you have never heard of Virtua Fighter before, you wouldn't even know this is a fighting game. Yeah, I didn't know it was a fighting game until after the fact.

[02:09:09] Because it looked like you were just doing beat up things in between scenes. And sometimes there would be a fighting game match that breaks out. But no, apparently it's a fighting game. No, this is a fighting ass fighting game. But this is I like that they're putting the story mode stuff first or marketing because you know how Street Fighter six is. It's like here's the fighting game. Well, I mean, everyone knows who Street Fighter is, but it's like here's the fighting game. Here is this world tour mode.

[02:09:36] You can also do Virtua Fighter Crossroads feels like the opposite. Here is this big story mode. Also, it's a fighting game, which is a very interesting way to market it. I hope that pays off for it because it looks amazing. Graphically, this shit looks like it's on PlayStation six. Like, I can't believe the way this game looks. Looks crazy. Also, judging by the language and the stuff going on in the story mode, this shit's rated mature.

[02:10:05] We have a mature rated VF. I never saw that coming. Interesting. So, yeah, man, I'm very excited for this. This looks super cool. Yeah, I don't know if that's going to make me jump in, but, you know, Royale with cheese, you know, these things happen. Xbox console. No. I don't know. It just bounces off for a while. Like, there's a Mafia Old Country expansion. This is how I learned Mafia Old Country came out, by the way.

[02:10:35] I didn't know that came out either. For years, it's like, it's coming soon. It's coming soon. Oh, it's been out for a while now. Here comes DLC. Fuck. I thought Star Wars Zero Company looked cool because I think you guys know I'm here for the ex-comming of pretty much anything. And Star Wars is like very ripe for that. So, yeah, Star Wars XCOM game. I'm into it. Yeah, this and the racer look good, but I just can't be jumping day in. Day in.

[02:11:03] Day one on Star Wars is these days. Did you guys? I mean, I don't know. I feel like an Among Us cartoon is like five years too late. I feel like they missed a train. I'm not saying it's not still popular. But Kevin, do you feel like this is like this should have came out like practically during the Rona? I well, I think you guys are thinking. I remember back when like AOC was playing Among Us and that was like that was like a moment

[02:11:32] in history. My kid and his friends were still playing this quite heavily. Like, and I think it was like a lot of kids that, you know, he was in grade five around that time, about a year ago. And it was still a thing then it's kind of died off around our house. But I think it's, uh, you know, as recent as the, as of a year ago, the kids were still playing. So. Okay. And I'm sure they are, but it there's, it's the, it's what happened with Angry Birds too. Like everyone signed on when it was like super hot shit.

[02:12:01] But, oh man, we're going to have a movie and a cartoon and all this shit. And then by the time it came out, it's at a reduced capacity that we're looking at now. So I'm sure there's something to the goofy one player Among Us times with their on guard story thing. But then they had a trailer for the show, which came out earlier that day. And Yvette Nicole Brown's character really had that whole, we're so happy you're Among Us title drop. I'm like, come on. Oh Lord.

[02:12:28] That, that, that, that's, that's like, you know, that's, that's the memes we may share around again. Yeah. It's, I don't know, man. I mean, I've never played Among Us. So maybe I'm just not in the, I'm obviously not in the demographic, but it is, it's here, I guess it's for somebody, but also they're making another Angry Birds movie. So maybe it's a point where like the kids are like nostalgic for early mobile games or something where like that might have a pull.

[02:12:55] I don't know back when the phone had a button. He ain't got no buttons no more. Were you to the, I know you haven't played Monster Hunter Wilds, but were you interested in this expansion regardless? Is this where you're going to jump in or? I don't know. They, they, they had the 10 minute thing afterward and then they're like, oh, but by the way, switch to version coming. I'm like, oh, maybe we'll see. Okay. Will you play Hot Wheels with me online then? I mean, that would be fun. You know what?

[02:13:24] This looks so damn cool for what it was. If I, if I was six to 10 years old, this would be on my Christmas list. It really would be, but pushing 40, I'll get it on a sale. I'm sure it's more fun than what showed up after this, which was Sonic Crosswords as we call it on the show where they, I mean, everybody. Yeah. Godzilla's there. Evan, Evangelion's there. We're making a mode called Sonic Pico Park.

[02:13:53] And I. Sega Sonic Pico Park is actually a separate game that they like tacked onto the end. Like, oh, by the way, we're making this. So that's not in the Sonic Crosswords game. That's a completely different game. Yeah. Yeah. There's a thing on Steam called Pico Park, and this is just going to be one with Sonic in it. Then why? Because they did those things like smushed together. Like I thought it was a mode too.

[02:14:25] I think my initial Sonic Crosswords take might go down as the most wrong take in fine time history. Guys, I don't think I could possibly be more wrong because for those who don't remember, we all played the beta, and then I came on here and said, well, you know, it's nice that it's just Sonic and not Sonic and all stars racing because Sonic has so much history and there's so many things to pull from and there's no need to put anyone else in it.

[02:14:52] I'm really looking forward to this pure Sonic presentation of then. Then it goes on to immediately become the biggest crossover slop of all time. Like I couldn't have possibly been more wrong if I tried. Holy shit. I'm going to be honest. I have been enjoying for the past week how like upset you are about Sonic Crosswords bringing me joy. I mean, you should.

[02:15:21] Someone should get joy out of it because man, I oof. That was that was the biggest swing and miss by me of all time. OK, the Wolf Among Us 2. I'm not sure how much I've ever talked about this on the show, but the original Wolf Among Us is one of my favorite games ever. That is not hyperbole. Like if I'm thinking about the PS4 era, that's like probably top five. I fucking love that game.

[02:15:50] It's so good. It's easily the best Telltale game. I love other Telltale games, too, but that is not just the best Telltale game, just one of the best games I've ever played. And so they announced the sequel so long ago. We all know the story. They announced it super long ago. Telltale games goes bankrupt. Now they are reformed. That game got way off track. But now it seems like it's coming in 2027, as I said. So I don't know if you guys ever played the Wolf Among Us, but I could not possibly recommend a game more.

[02:16:18] I haven't, but they also announced the remastered version of the original coming like, oh, good. I can catch up. Yeah, I definitely do. Okay. I have a question. I've wanted to play this for a while and actually went out of my way a few months ago to get an Xbox One disc of it. So I've got it sitting here. Do I, is this a game that needs a remaster? Because I can very much see me this being one of those situations that you guys give

[02:16:47] me shit about where I'm playing the original when the new version is coming out. Is there any reason to remaster something like the Wolf Among Us? I don't see any reason why I shouldn't just play the fucking Xbox One disc before the second one comes out. I don't see. I don't think there's a problem with that. I would imagine the remaster is, as implies, just one-to-one like graphical facelift, which like I don't think I mean, I think the original art style holds a lot.

[02:17:14] It may be a little polygonal now, but like, I don't know. I don't think I would not make fun of you if you played the original. I guess. Okay. Kevin, I will similarly not make fun of you if you played Xbox One version of Wolf Among Us. Steve, I don't believe you. You are the one who likes making fun of me this the most. No, no, no, no, no. But at the same time, I can't be going back and buying an Xbox and like just to find one copy of Wolf Among Us for that. No, we'll let it slide. It'll be fine.

[02:17:44] Okay. All right. We'll let you slide this time. I will trust you this time. Okay. So they announced Street Fighter 6 season four with three newcomers and Tifa. Tifa. She's a newcomer. Oh, she is a newcomer, but like the characters does not exist before. So the characters are Yasmin, Arjun, Bosch, Bosch, who was in the story mode of the world tour mode of Street Fighter 6.

[02:18:13] So now he is playable in the game. So new character, I guess. And then Tifa. So here's why this is crazy for those who haven't been paying attention to this shit. There was a leak, a quote unquote leak a few weeks ago where someone said Street Fighter 6 season four was going to be Vega, Gokin, Hagar, and Tifa. Okay. Those were the characters quote unquote leaked.

[02:18:38] I didn't believe that for a second, but it felt safe enough to kind of be true. You know what I mean, Steve? Like if you were going to make up a season four and then have a crazy guest character, that's what you would say. But the only character that was right was Tifa. So I don't think that was a leak at all. I think that was a fake leak that happened to get one crazy ass guest character right. So that's just my opinion. What do you think? I don't think they actually knew about Tifa.

[02:19:07] I think it was just a guess. I have a problem that probably that may or may not get resolved with my world tour playthrough that I'm still doing. I'm sure you just just ruin it for me right now. Is Hagar really dead? Because we're finding the Hagar Memorial Park that they're opening in that game. And that implies he's dead. I don't know. Or at least I should say I don't remember. So I don't I don't think so.

[02:19:36] But I think they didn't really say either way. So unless they actually nobody actually talks about him. He was. Well, I mean, I mean, I know he's not the mayor of Metro City anymore, but just because they say he was a great mayor doesn't mean he's like dead. No, but I mean, when you call something the Memorial Stadium, that usually means they're not with us anymore. I guess so. But I don't know. They didn't really make it clear, but I'm not sure. I don't remember much of world tour at this point. It's been a while.

[02:20:06] But here's also the thing with season four. So the last character of season three was Ingrid, and that's going to be the last character added to world tour, meaning going forward here, there's not going to be any more world tour content because it's I mean, look, it's pretty feature complete. They've been adding all these characters as we go along. They probably don't need to add anything else. But do you think, Steve, they can't do any more world tour because of Tifa? Because you know how Squeenix is about their characters.

[02:20:35] They only want them depicted certain ways and shit. There's like all sorts of rules about it. I feel like you could do the other characters that aren't if I mean, Bosch is already in the game, so he's out. But I mean, you know, Yasmin and Arjun should be fine. Maybe they're just done. Maybe it's just cost cutting at this point. Yeah, because I mean, in my opinion, I hope they're doing it because they're making a new fighting game. But, you know, you never know. Right. So I don't know.

[02:21:01] So I thought even if they weren't done, they would have to be done now because of Tifa. I don't think Square would let them in world tour. I have before we move on. I just wanted to let you guys know my input on Street Fighter 6. I don't know what the fuck you guys are talking about, but the whole time you're talking about Hagar, I'm envisioning Sammy Hagar. And I just wanted you guys to know that. That would be an incredible character for Street Fighter 6. That's not what Hagar looks like? No, no. No, Hagar.

[02:21:31] Well, I'll show you pictures later. He's he's a he's an 80. He's a 80s and 90s man. I'll just put it that way. Oh, Sammy Hagar is an 80s and 90s man, too. But you know, but you know what, though? There is an extremely robust character creator, Street Fighter 6. I'm sure you can make Sammy Hagar. There's no way you can. OK. Like, can you do that for me? Steve, you've seen the freaks people have online. Like, you can be a guy that made mostly look like me.

[02:22:01] I mean, I'm sure you can get the Sammy Hagar. I'm sure you can. But OK. Yeah. So Hamaguchi from Square was on stage. The director of of Final Fantasy 7 remake series is on stage to present Tifa with the Street Fighter 6 team. So, you know what the hammer was going to be. Final Fantasy 7 Revelation. That is the title. I didn't really know what it was going to be. I was thinking, like, Renewal or something like that. But Revelation, it is.

[02:22:29] So, I think this might count as a mini fuck I was wrong. Because I thought there was no way in hell they were going to wriggle out of their contract with Sony and have the third game be multi-platform from the jump. I never saw that coming. So, I'm wrong. I did not think that would happen. I don't know. Maybe there was something in there about that they were able to spin back about sales and that they weren't enough. That, like, hey, we want out now. I don't know.

[02:22:57] I feel like these games sold plenty. I mean, and they're going to sell over time, especially as it becomes complete. They're going to sell and sell and sell for a long time. They've been bitching that it hasn't been, though. Square does has been doing that for 15 years, though. They think they never think anything sells enough. So, I don't know, man. And they also marketed Rebirth like shit, if you remember. Like, the marketing campaign, like, as it was coming out, was pretty, like, non-existent. So, I don't know.

[02:23:26] I feel like they put that on themselves. And then, like, shortly after that is when they had their big shake-up slash blow-up, the whole thing they've been going through the last couple years. So, but yeah. It would be really interesting to find out. Like, I hope we get some details on what that did look like with Sony, because I would have never guessed that either. Well, yeah. Because Sony helped fund it. I'm sure they're getting a cut of profits, because that's a pre-Rona deal, even, obviously, considering how long they've been working on the remake series.

[02:23:55] I don't know if I have anything super insightful to say about the footage that was shown. I mean, nothing. I mean, we've been going long enough already. I don't really have time, but this is definitely my most anticipated game. Obviously, it has been since the day I beat Rebirth. It has been my most anticipated game now that it has a title, Revelation. I'm here. I want it now more than ever. Can't wait for spring 2027.

[02:24:21] Hopefully, that doesn't mean, like, June 10th, 2027, which is still technically spring. I do have a small, big question for us. It just feels like this is the end of the third-party exclusive, doesn't it? We watched all the legacy games leave PlayStation jail however many years ago. Now they did what they said they would. They got a big-ticket game on all the things at the same time.

[02:24:45] I mean, I'm not going to rehash this conversation for the trillionth time around here, but I don't think the kids get what a big deal that Final Fantasy VII is going to be on everything at once. Yeah, it is a big deal. No, they won't get it. And no, I don't think it's the end of third-party exclusives on consoles. I think there will always be money exchanged to have a Stellar Blade exclusive for a while or a Resident Evil 2002 or whatever you want to pick through history. Like, I think that's always going to happen. I don't know.

[02:25:14] That just seems like so small now, especially since we saw Stellar Blade earlier today. But regardless, though, whether that continues or not, it is going to be more incumbent than ever among platform holders to hold their platform the way Nintendo does. But that's just my take. Kevin, what did you think? I mean... Yeah, I mean, I think this looks awesome. And it just added to my ever-growing guilt of not having finished Rebirth. I guess this is the time to...

[02:25:44] I booted up Rebirth probably a month or two ago because I left off where... And I don't know if I can articulate this properly, where you're playing as Barrett and Red. And then you're going on Red's journey. It's like the... Oh. So I met the boss there. And I spent probably like 40 minutes. I left off when I was playing it a long time ago there. Could not beat the boss. So I'm like... Okay. I feel like I don't even remember how to play the game enough.

[02:26:13] So I'm going to have to... Yeah, I don't know. Maybe you can back out and fight some other shit. Yeah, I got to do something. Because yeah, watching this, I was like, fuck, I really should finish that game. Because it was a great game. It was just a lot of game. Anyway, that was the show. That was Summer Games Fest. That is it for our show, too. I think we've... This might be the longest show. I mean, it's not a big deal per se. But geez, we really talked about all the conferences. Well, there was a lot to talk about this time. I mean, we did the show last year and we didn't have nearly as much to talk about. If you remember.

[02:26:43] Because honestly, that Summer Game Fest kind of sucked. And this one was good. So glad to be here. It was really nice having a solid week of all of these conferences together. And it felt like a good E3 replacement this year. This is the first time this week has felt like E3 since E3. It might have been. Yeah. It really has. Because this gave me that feeling.

[02:27:12] 2022 was pretty good. But the fact that Nintendo even joined in on this this time, you know, just made it feature complete, if you will. All right. Well, we've talked about all the conferences. Thanks for joining us for that. We love to do this every year. And we will continue to do so. Check the description of this podcast to find Earthlings on social media. And we'll see you next time. Bye. You've been listening to...