Summer Games Royal Rumble 2026

[00:00:33] Welcome everyone to another episode of the Friday Night Gamecast, a dedicated video game podcast where two best friends come together to celebrate games, bring you industry news, game impressions, reviews, and more. I'm your host Nick, and I'm joined, as always, by the man, the myth, the legend. He is the individual who takes his gin martinis shaken and not stirred. And the diplomatic envoy and retainer to King Winceless Less IV, young Willie the Kid, how you doing?

[00:01:00] I am here. It's Pride Month, and I'm not queer, but shout out to the community. Shout out to the community. Shout out to the community. It's gonna be a good time. I'm excited. Ready to go. Listen, we, uh, the summer's been hot so far, and I'm not just talking weather. I'm not talking temperature. The game reviews, the game announcements, and, God, what we have for the future, it's, uh, it's got us boiling, buddy.

[00:01:23] It's been a game time for summer. For sure, for sure. It's definitely been a summer for game time, and, uh, I'm really excited to talk with you about this today. So this is our episode. We're talking about the summer game roundup. I'm calling it a Royal Rumble. I don't know what the heck I'm calling it. It's something. Royal Rumble's correct because, you know, folks are getting boxed. Folks are getting boxed. Someone's getting tossed out of the ring. And that ring is September and October. If we're talking September, you're, uh, you're getting beat up a little bit. Yeah. Trust me. We gotta, we gotta get it. All of our wallets are getting just taken for a loop. It's tough.

[00:01:53] This is, this is definitely the time where, like, paying for PlayStation Plus Premium and, like, Game Pass is probably gonna, yeah, show its quality. Definitely. Like, here's the thing. These game developers don't understand these publishers. They don't get it. I have a child. So when they keep putting out these releases back to back to back like this, they're taking food out of my child's mouth. That's crazy. Am I supposed to not play these games? September has, like, 30 games coming out. A game a day? She can drink some water.

[00:02:23] You know, water is good for her. I mean, that's all you really need is 70% water. Well, folks, this is gonna be another great episode of the Friday Night Gamecast, but we couldn't be here without our lovely patrons. Now, Patreon, our feed, it's been a little, it's been a little dry. It's been a little dry. It's been a little barren of the desert. It's getting there. But, you know, we're gonna do a one-hit wonder, one-take wonder. I'm not even gonna edit this. I'm just gonna immediately throw it on the Patreon.

[00:02:49] Just gonna go, boom. Here you go. Here's the thing. And then maybe upload the art later. We'll see. We'll see what happens. But definitely huge thank you for all of our continued supporting patrons. I got some ideas bouncing around in this old head of mine, and I think I might have some more bandwidth here sooner.

[00:03:05] Not to dox myself or talk about any serious life of Cypher or try to overpromise, but I'm hoping that I can maybe get some cool ideas up on the Patreon and hopefully get that there for your enjoyment overall. So, moving on. I want to talk about a little bit of housekeeping for the Friday Night Gamecast. Join our Discord or I'll literally kill you. Join the Discord. Join it. Join it. Samurai Kibiji, I'm talking to you. God, the callouts. Join the Discord. Join it.

[00:03:35] All right. I invited you once. You said no. I invite you guys. I'm kidding. I'm kidding. I'm kidding. You don't have to join. You don't have to join. Actually, though. As he stares sinners through. He's like, of course. Of course. Moving on to... Exactly. Moving on to some news. You know, Xbox. What are we doing? What are you... What are we doing? Listen. I want to talk... I got to talk about this with you.

[00:04:02] I'm trying to remember because I know we've been a little irregular, but I feel like if we had not, then I'd know in like person slash personally, you know, on Discord, what have you, we've been like, Asha is Asha, right? I believe the new... I'm like, hey, look. She's turning the ship around. She's got some good moves. I knew the ship was coming. I knew the ship was coming. You said you're waiting for the other ship to drop. But I was like, dropping the price is good, setting the standards, saying we're going to commit to more on like games directly on.

[00:04:29] And I also don't want to say this is her fault because realistically, a bunch of different moves were happening. She just happens to be the person holding the bag, right? Just kind of like Phil, right? Yeah, exactly. He happens to be the person holding the bag. That being said, not a good look. Not a good look. We had a really good summer showcase grouping. A lot of games coming out. People were really excited and getting hyped for games. And then having just so many like different closures and people talking about closures, even if something has not fully happened yet.

[00:04:57] The fact that it's being like, hey, this is a thing that could happen from all these different leakers and whistleblowers. It's just the optics are terrible. Yeah, the optics are really bad. And I think like it's a continuation. Like this is not new Xbox. This is not new Xbox, new us. This is same old Xbox, same old like mixed messaging, like mixed decision making where it's like she comes in and she's like, we're going to revitalize the brand. And then we're going to double down on the things and the strengths that work for us.

[00:05:27] But then she's like Gears of War E-Day exclusive. Like people have said in the media that they're putting Gears of War in what is the compulsion games game? Not the compulsion games. Clockwork. Clockwork Revolution. They're putting those two titles out to die. And I don't know. I mean, like I don't see.

[00:05:46] The thing is, is that I wonder if they just their strategy is to try and get a little bit of an influx to, you know, bump up those numbers of Game Pass once again, possibly by making it like PC and console exclusive for a limited period. And then later be like, oh, just kidding. The exclusivity period is up. And then now it's going to go to PS5. Like, I don't know. I don't know if anybody knows what that decision making is going to look like. Like they own the IP.

[00:06:10] So they very clearly, if they really want to, you know, injection in the arm for the numbers of like the stuff that they've paid hundreds of millions of dollars for at this point, they can always send it over to PS5. Especially considering that recent Gears remake went on or remastered, whatever you want to call it, went on to PS5. Yeah. I mean, they kind of set that groundwork. They primed people for it. Correct. We have the new Halo remake going on to PS5. So they're starting off saying, hey, here's our number one in these series that are historically Xbox.

[00:06:38] It only makes sense if they were to start saying, all right, going forward, they're also going to be on PlayStation. Yeah. See where she's coming from. Like you said, and maybe even like you mentioned there too, right? Period of exclusivity for PC and the console. Because at first I didn't know if Xbox exclusive was just Xbox only or Xbox and PC, which it sounds like it's going to be Xbox and PC. That's my understanding. It's like PC Game Pass and Xbox. Like I don't know if they're going to put it on Steam. It's very hazy.

[00:07:06] And what really doesn't make sense to me too is that you can't really have a Gears with the Gears multiplayer. And clearly they're going to do a beta for the Gears multiplayer if I'm not mistaken. And if they're going to have a Gears multiplayer, like why not have it on Steam? You know, of all places. If you want to drive engagement, you want to drive revenue. Like that's how you do it. You put it on a place where the most players in the world are. Yep. And that's Steam. So anyway, that's, yeah, definitely Xbox is just, it's sad to see it, man. And I'm going to tell you this right now.

[00:07:36] I'm going to tell our audience on the podcast. I don't really care what Project Helix is. I'm probably not going to buy it. I'm not going to invest in that hardware. Especially with you getting more PC-wise. I mean, if anything comes to PC that's also Xbox related, I'm sure you want to play it on your PC versus. Your living room, Xbox, whatever it's going to be. It's, I mean, it's tricky, right?

[00:07:57] Because especially now, just with like my current working environments or how, you know, that's going to stack up coming forward here in the future. I don't know if I, you know, it's just a quality of life. Take it easy, Jono from the Elvetro's podcast talks about this a lot. And other people talk about this a lot. You know, friends of the show, you know, I think Sam Raikibiji said the same thing too. It is that, you know, people who work from home, we don't want to be sitting in our desk for eight hours a day doing the work or in their standing, sitting, standing, whatever the case may be.

[00:08:27] And then get off work and then play eight hours worth of games at our desk in the same room. So it's like, I definitely need that like a little bit of like breath, fresh air, which is why it's nice to jump on the PS5. Sometimes I got, yeah, I got first live on the PS5 for that very same reason. So if I want to grind out Pragmata, I go to the PS5, you know, spoilers for our next segment. But yeah, it's kind of the kind of like it, but yeah, Xbox, I hope they figure it out. Yeah, that's the plan.

[00:08:54] If they go and here's the thing, I think people are like, I feel like there's a console warrior group of people that are like really sad and distraught that like, it's just a struggling brand. And it's going to continue to struggle until something changes radically for them to find a sustainable business model. Yeah. But if they just go to a third party publisher, that's not like, that's not the end of the world.

[00:09:18] Not having a box under your TV really doesn't, doesn't matter as long as you can like play the games that you identify with Xbox. True. Like sure, you use this. What do you think? Well, we can't count out Xbox though. I mean, look, if we live in a year where the New York Knicks won the NBA finals, Xbox can come back. Listen, they can get beat up the last two console generations or so and then fire back on it.

[00:09:40] So I would love to see them continue and hopefully thrive in the future because that competition is important for games as we see the second somebody gets no competition. I mean, I feel like ultimately stuff just starts to fall by the wayside, whether it be micromanagement, not micromanagement, microtransaction hell or just a complete dip in the quality of the product because these folks feel like they're super comfortable. Like, you know, when's the last time people really looked at a Madden or like a 2K and was like, oh man, this is like a next step. This is a leap, right?

[00:10:10] This is great. Yeah. No, they're comfortable where they're at because they know you're going to have your built-in people that buy it. And it doesn't matter if the game comes out fantastic. It just has to be good enough. And I want games to continue to push the envelope. Most people will probably say we're getting that from devs versus publishers, but I want publishers to be able to have the opportunity and have that kind of foresight to say, hey, we want products and or developers that are going to do well and push the medium for game forward. Yeah. And hopefully not, you know, close them the second they have a game that doesn't do well.

[00:10:42] Wrist in peace to Compulsion Games. God. And Double Fine and everyone else that's getting Ninja Theory. Double Fine official or do they just post the emoji? So the news as of right now is that Compulsion Games is getting shut down, I believe. But Double Fine, Ninja Theory, and one other of their studios who's like, they're not making money.

[00:11:09] They're in active negotiations with Xbox right now to figure out if they can be either be like, you know, there's a few options. You become a wholly owned subsidiary, basically go the Toys for Bob route where you basically become independent, but you promise games to Xbox in return basically for them to get revenue and that sort of thing. But you are an independent subsidiary. You don't have like, you don't rely, you don't get any budget. You don't get anything from, you know, Microsoft, but you're not going to get a closed up shop by them.

[00:11:39] And the thing is, is I think so that's happening for toys. So they're basically Ninja Theory and Toys for Bob are figuring it out right now. So they're either got to get a new investor outside of Xbox and completely go through a divestiture or they have to become an independent subsidiary or they get shut down. One of the one of the three options. They use time for people to start praying at the shrine of Capcom. Yeah. See, the thing is, is that Capcom has really like, we talk about it all the time about like what a good business it is.

[00:12:08] And it's more than just them being able to put out good games consistently. I mean, that's, that's the key putting out good games consistently, but it's also their sustainable business model and their ability to like play into their strengths. They don't over budget. They don't like try and market games, like, you know, put hundreds of millions of dollars into games, like for marketing in terms of like thinking about it. They'll show like a, like three trailers and then come out with a game in the same year. And it's just, they have a crazy good cadence and it's like, they're meeting the cut.

[00:12:38] They're meeting exactly what their customer base is and demands are. And they're getting all of the money for it. I mean, what was it? I think it was like, um, there was news that came out recently that was talking about how like Resident Evil Requiem is like the most. It's like, it's like one of the highest selling games in, in their franchise history. Yeah, I think so. Yeah. Which is like insane. I know when they put that list of Resident Evil games where RE5 is still, I think at the top, which is nuts. Yeah. RE5. God, what a crazy game.

[00:13:07] Anyway, let's move on. Yep, yep. Will, what are you playing right now? Well, as far as right now, I got a couple of games kind of, sort of that I'm going through. My number one, which I know you have on your list as well. So it's kind of knocking it out and getting there is playing some Pragmata. Speaking of Capcom. Buddy. Buddy, buddy, buddy. I don't want to spoil too much because we're going to talk about this game. Oh yeah. We have a full-blown review scheduled for this. So you're going to get all of my thoughts and feelings, et cetera. But not to bury the lead at all.

[00:13:37] This is a good game. Slaps. Is a good game. And I knew it was going to be good because A, it's Capcom. B, I played the demo and I was like, oh, this is great. The only question mark before going into it was, is the hacking while shooting thing going to be cumbersome or not? And it works. They did a fantastic job with it. They figured it out. So yeah, that's been what I've been playing recently. I've been putting all my time into it. So that has been my main focus. I've been loving it. I'm getting pretty close to the end. I think I'm like right at the last chapter. Dude, I am too. That's where I'm at.

[00:14:07] Yo, for sure. Yeah. Yeah. I think. No. We were talking the other day, dear listeners, I was talking to him, assuming he had already beat the game because he told me about it. Yes, I am. I am. And I was like, oh yeah, I can't believe when X happened. He spoiled it for me. And you were like, yo, spoilers. I'm like, you bought this game the day it came out. I'm in the final area. I thought it was in the final stretch. You said you were. In the last area. You were in the lunar, like jumping around space person where it's hard to jump. That's not the last area.

[00:14:37] You got two more places after that. Oh, exactly. The f***. So. It came so long. It's not that long. Oh. It's like 16 hours golden pad. You're just taking your time. I did. I did. I did go back. I backtracked and I like started clearing out some stuff and trying to get the upgrades and everything. So. I have a hundred in all the earlier spots and I'm trying to do. Oh, you went a hundred? Yeah. Yeah. And I'm trying to do all of the little side. Are you going to platenum game? Of course. It's Capcom. You don't have to. I'm not. Did I, did I platinum RE9? No.

[00:15:07] Yes, I did. Yes, I did. Not before me. I think I did. Anyways, Pragmod has been great. I have on my two playlists, but not quite, but I have booted it up. So technically I am playing it. Good old Kingdom Come Deliverance 2. Oh, let's go. Let's go. Sir Henry. So you've booted it up? I booted it up. I booted it up. I have not like played a significant portion of it. I think I'm still technically in the tutorial. Oh, so you're in the tutorial. Yeah.

[00:15:36] Like I got out of the initial castle raid area. Oh, yes. And I was like talking to somebody in a field on a horse and then I stopped from there. Okay. Yes. You're the very beginning. Yeah. So the very, very beginning of the game. I mean, it looks cool. It looks great. I can't really talk on it yet because I have legitimately not played more than 25 to 30 minutes. Sure. Yeah. That's nothing. But everything is pretty solid so far and I've heard so much between yourself and the elder troll boys. Shout out to the homies kind of talking about how great it is.

[00:16:02] So I am looking forward to really digging my teeth in there and getting some fun. It's going to be a good time. Feel free to ping me if you have any questions on that. I'm happy to answer any quality of life questions if you ever have a quote. But I'm almost certain. How do I keep drinking without getting drunk in this game? Oh, yeah. You don't. Here's the thing. You don't. You don't. You just do it. But yeah, definitely a good game. I'm curious as how that performs on the PS5. Yep. But I'm sure it's I'm sure it looks good.

[00:16:33] Yeah, it's a pretty game. So far it looks good. I haven't had any chugging or anything, but I also haven't gotten into a huge fight. I've fought a couple of guys in the opening area. So that was interesting getting used to that whole like. It's a weird system. Yeah. And I think that's like one of the biggest complaints about that game is that or I say people complain about it. I don't think it's a really valid complaint because I think it's a perfectly. usable combat system. I think it's just it serves the purpose of the game and them trying to be grounded.

[00:16:59] So I feel like it's not too dissimilar from I don't think you've ever played For Honor. But I've never played that. When you play For Honor, you have three cardinal directions. It's like top, bottom left and bottom right. And that's where you kind of aim your weapon. And if you're holding that area when someone attacks you in one of those three areas and you meet them there, you automatically like block it. Yeah. I think you have to press a button to kind of parry it in that area. Yeah. And then that's also where you attack from. So you like, you know, you're holding up from the top.

[00:17:29] You press the attack button. You're doing a top down attack depending on which button you hit. Not bad. It's kind of like rock, paper, scissors. So I feel like there's a little bit of that in there. It's just now getting used to how that actually works for the single player thing. Because, you know, you want to go in there. This is not Elder Scrolls, for example, right? You don't just swing your weapons around and use up all your stamina. Yeah. Because then you're like, oh, I'm going to fight four guys and win. And yeah, Kingdom Come Deliverance is like, no, you're not. You're not going to do that. No.

[00:17:58] It's like Dark Souls. It's like a Soulsborne combat formula where if you're going more than two on one, you're cooked. Yeah. Immediately cooked. Unless you're just like that. Unless you're him. Unless you're Henry. No. No. Even if you're not him. Even if you're him, you're going to get cooked. Cool. Playing through as well, I just wrapped up recently Immortals. God, what is it? Immortals of Avium. Yeah, Immortals of Avium. That's what it was.

[00:18:26] So honestly, if I'm being 100% honest, fun game. Fun game. It's a boomer shooter type game. So if you really think Doom with magic, that's not too far off. Obviously, it's nowhere near as vicious. I think the game is rated T for teen because you hit. Actually, no, it's not. It's rated M. I forgot. It should be rated T for teen. I forgot I had that conversation. But because you're using magic, most people just turn into dust when you beat them. So it's not that bad. So gameplay formula is closest to Doom? Doom, yeah. So you're jumping around.

[00:18:56] There's a couple of different things you have as the game progresses, especially for like your platforming. And then some of that platforming is included in your fighting arenas. So it's the classic. You platform or slash walk to a different place. Yeah. You walk into a big area. Oh no, the wall is shut behind you. Time to fight. You fight and kill. And then you're like, all right, move on to the next place. That's effectively all it is. But the story is fun. I think it's, is it great? No. But it's a fun story.

[00:19:24] The characters are all to varying degrees enjoyable and legitimately the voice acting itself is done well. So it's the kind of game where it's a very solid, like a kind of, you know, 60, 70 type of situation. A game that probably would have really benefited from a sequel, potentially, if the studio had survived. I would say potentially. Okay. It's the kind of thing to where it tries to wrap it in a pretty solid area. Yeah. Oh, so like it wraps up the story. It wraps it up.

[00:19:52] It's very much of that degree to where it wraps. And if they never get another one, which realistically they won't, it's perfectly fine as far as a self-encapsulating story. If they did get a sequel, like you said, it would just expand on what they already had there and it would probably be better received, especially with some quality of life fixes, et cetera. Okay. Gotcha. But still, very enjoyable for what I had. If you catch it on a deep discount, I would say it's well worth playing through. It took me, I think, 20 something hours to beat it. And then I'm going to try to get a little bit of the platinum.

[00:20:21] So it'll probably take me like another five hours or so. Oh, you're going for the platinum, that one. It was fun. Only, the only bad part, and that's the worst part about the platinum is it's like get all of the chest and there's like 120 chests. Oh, Jesus. So I'm just going to throw on a little bit of music. You could just throw on a little bit of music. You could just play Kingdom Come Delirants too. Have a fun. That's true. Which I probably will do because that's my focus. So that's why Immortals have been on the back burner as far as getting the platinum. I beat the game. It was a fun game. So I had a good time there. You can plan a move for Christmas. How about that? I accept that.

[00:20:50] Even though I'll be knee deep in Grand Theft Auto 6. That's true. Yeah. So that's true. It's hard. What about yourself though? What you been playing up to? So yeah. I've been playing the same games that I've been talking about for a little bit. Yeah, he has been. Yeah, I guess what? None of them are Baldur's Gate 3. Yeah. It's June. None of them. I have a plan. I have a plan. No, he doesn't. I have a plan. No, he doesn't.

[00:21:17] I have a plan and that's not to play every new game this year. Even though I do want to play Fire Emblem and Ace Combat 8. And there's so many good games. There's so many good games. There's so many good games. So many good games. Yeah, you're done. Resonant. You're done. You're done. You don't have the time. You don't have the time. I'll find the time. I bet you won't. I'll find the time. I told you this last year. You wouldn't. I'm going to do it. I'm going to find it. But yeah, so I'm trying to think about what order I want to talk about these in.

[00:21:43] I'm going to start with Pocopia because we actually recorded an episode right before us recording this. I have an episode done with Trina from the Gamer Heads podcast. She's great. She came on the show. We reviewed Pokemon Pocopia. It's a fantastic game. Every single part of that game deserves its high scores. It is genuinely, and I mean this without any type of hyperbolic language here, it is

[00:22:11] like the best Pokemon game that I've played in the modern generation. Hardcore. All right. Like seriously, like since. Because you were big on XYZ. So I'm surprised. ZA. And ZA was good for the things that it was doing. But ZA is still limited by the Pokemon company and Game Freak's formula. And I think that's the real trick to Pocopia is that they kind of just, the Pokemon company

[00:22:36] just let, they let the team over there at Omega Force do what they needed to do to make the game. And they just went hog wild with it, man. The writing is top notch. Which is nuts. The interactions that Ditto has with the other Pokemon is so heartwarming and heartfelt. It is great. I cover all of this in the review. So please, I'm not going to give too much of the sauce here. But it is just genuinely a fun game.

[00:23:01] It's one of those games where if I was anyone else, I would like make it a point to like play this game the entire year and make all four areas or all of the main areas in the game beautiful. I would make it like my Animal Crossing Island. Like if we were in a pandemic, this would be a perfect pandemic game. If this was, if this was like another number, I'm knocking on wood. I'm knocking on wood right now because the Hentavirus kicks in. Nobody needs another global pandemic for sure. Please don't. No more of that, please.

[00:23:31] But if we did, but if we did, Pocopia would do numbers. It's really good. It's definitely one of those games where you can live in it. It's perfect for people who are lovers of the Sims. Perfect for people who are longtime Pokemon fans. That's my recommendation at the end of the episode is that if you are a Pokemon fan and you are one of those rare people that has, you decide, you know, one of the sickos like me who decided to buy a Switch 2, play the game. It is, it is like the definitive game to play on a Switch 2.

[00:23:59] That is why you get a Switch 2 is for Pocopia. It is so good. So yeah, I'll leave it at that. Please check out the review for it. We're going to have in a little while here. Looking forward to listening. It says the Pocopia. It's going to be a good one. Yeah. Word salad. Yeah. It's going to be good. But so I also had played through Pragmata. I had put down Pragmata for quite a while. I don't think I've talked about it on a show in quite some time because I feel like we've had like reviews or other stuff that we've talked about. So I haven't gone in depth on Pragmata, but like I agree with everything you're saying.

[00:24:29] Like the game has the sauce. Like it's for sure. I have like a thesis statement that I'm going to say for our actual review on like why it's so good. How Capcom has the sauce. And this is a brand new developer. This is the director's first debut within Capcom. And it's like he had been working with Capcom for quite a number of years, but this is his first time at the helm. So this is an example of them building their talent from within.

[00:24:59] And it's just showcase here. I'll just say this for folks, you know, for people who kind of are like-minded with me, who like really seek out story. Pragmata is not really a game that's got a story in it and it's good. It's serviceable. It gets you from point in point. It's not really going to be like something that's like meaty that you want to sink your teeth into. What the really the bread and butter of Pragmata is the combat in the level design and all of that stuff in there. Yeah. And one thing I know we're not going to get too deep because we're going to have a full on review for it.

[00:25:26] But just like the combat is fantastic to level design, like you said, incredible. I just love how the levels are set out. But while I agree, the story isn't like really a big focus. The character interactions is specifically between like you and Diana. That's like carries the whole game. And I mean, I'm almost at the end and I'm just like every time they have a little interaction, this is girl dad propaganda. It really is. It really is. The video game. I'm just like, oh my God. I was like, whoever, you know, design wrote, did every whatever with Diana. Yeah.

[00:25:54] They legitimately have kids because she just does the kid mannerisms. Like if you have a child, you know, you look at Diana, I'm just like, holy smokes, that's my daughter just goofing up, just being a little goofball. I want to ask you, I want to ask you this here because I don't want to, I don't want to like waste time on this in the actual review. What do you think about people being weird about that game? I don't love it. I mean, it's the thing where it's the internet. So everyone's worst ideas, thoughts, whatever bubble to the surface.

[00:26:22] And unfortunately the worst things get the loudest like responses because obviously people are going to shout it down for the most part. So it's like, it's, it's the classic, somebody says something to get attention. Congratulations. They got the attention. But I think it's, it's like the most low hanging fruit is exactly what it is. Right. Yeah. You see something young and innocent and you're like, I'm going to corrupt it. And that's what some people on the internet chose to do. And other people justifiably, which is like, no, you're being weird.

[00:26:49] Like, yeah, well, I think it's part, I think it's like, from my perspective, it's like that it's, it's a knee jerk response from certain spaces where people are like saying, oh, like Japanese people shouldn't be making games with children. That makes no sense. It makes no sense. Like that's just children forever. Yeah. Like nobody said that about the fucking last of us, but we're going to talk about Capcom that way. Anyway, that's my piece on it. We don't have to, we don't have to linger. I've been playing double Oh seven first light.

[00:27:16] Do do do do do da da da da da da da. See, I hate it because you, and I think Jono is playing it too. And he's loving it. He finished it. Pretty much. He finished it. Effectively what it is. Listen, I know at the top of the show, everyone said, please join the discord. I think y'all need to join it and I need to get out because I'm getting all this peer pressure every time I'm like, oh, I don't need to play this brand new game. I have a life and a wife and a family and a child and people who care about me. And it's like, oh, the game is so good.

[00:27:44] I'm just like, she can watch you play double Oh seven. She likes James Bond. She likes James Bond. Who? Who's she? No, no, no one in my house with two X chromosomes. Zero people. Shout out to James Bond, but you, you got, you got no, no love over at my home. I'm telling you. Yelvington doesn't like that at all. At all. Zero. That's crazy. None. We know you're right. She doesn't. She does not, she doesn't. What's his face up? We watched it.

[00:28:13] I think we watched one together a while back. Probably. Like when I was in the apartment. But I'm trying to remember the, let's say Daniel Craig. She likes Daniel Craig just because he's funny and other things. And hot. He's really hilarious. He's so funny. Other things. And charming. But. Does not care for him as Bond. Does not really care for Bond in general. Well, she doesn't like him as Bond. She doesn't like James Bond. So she doesn't really care. Yeah. Like the character, the property, how he acts, all that spy thing. She's not really like a spy person. She's not an espionage.

[00:28:43] Person. No. She's more of an Ethan Hunt person, isn't she? No. She does not like spies. If you identify as a spy, she does not like you. She doesn't like you. She doesn't like you. She's very. She's very anti-espionage. She's anti-espionage. Okay. I like that. Well, we're not anti-007 here at the Friday Night Gamecast. I really, really like this game. I've heard a lot of like critiques about it online. And genuinely, I don't know what the fuck they're talking about.

[00:29:13] Like 88 is too low for this game. Correct. We talk about like in terms of just like the fun factor of this game, the playability. I've only run into like, I have like maybe like one crash, but it's like that wasn't even a big issue. I loaded in. I didn't lose any progress. I mean, it's like the game forces you to play like you're an action hero. And once I realized that, once that clicked for me, I was like, oh my God, this is incredible. This is incredible.

[00:29:41] It's one of those combat systems that I don't know this for sure, but I imagine it's very akin to Uncharted where you just are always in motion. You're constantly in motion. It's kind of similar to Doom too, where it's like if you stop moving, you're kind of dead. You're cooked. So yeah, it's definitely one of those where you it's. But I also love the stealth system. The stealth system was like the thing that I was, I mean, I guess I shouldn't have been worried about it because it's like the hitman. Yeah, the hitman group. That's the one thing I knew for sure they were going to do well. It's just so good.

[00:30:11] It's so good. So yeah, 007 First Light. I'm playing that over on the PS5 Pro. I kind of dabbled in being like, oh, but what if I buy it on PC? But I just, I was like, no, this is a couch game. This is a cinematic sit back, relax, play it for sure. Last thing I'll talk about without taking up too much time is Slade the Spire 2. You watched Jono and I. I sure did. This is my first, my very first co-op run.

[00:30:35] And Will decided to join the voice channel on the server and be like, oh, look whose face is in the ground, in the dirt. I came in. Jono's sitting here fighting. I think it was the Act 2 boss. Was it the Act 2 boss? The big worm? Yeah, it was the Act 2 boss. And I'm just like, oh, it was an elite. Oh, I thought that was multiplayer. What's going on here? I just see someone silent, just face down in the mud. Yep. Taking a nice little dirt net. I'm like, oh, you got KO'd before I even came in. I went into that fight with like 15 health. So.

[00:31:04] And whose fault is it? Not mine. Not mine. I love it. He didn't heal me enough. He didn't. He didn't heal me enough. God. It is what it is. No responsibility. I love it. No, absolutely not. Absolutely not. No, Slade the Spire 2 is really good. Claire, Kanisha, if you happen to be listening to this episode, it is very well worth your time. And plus, you know, the girlies can play together if you really wanted to. Will refuses to play with me because Will doesn't have a thing that he can. I don't.

[00:31:35] He doesn't. What are you showing me? What are you showing me right there? Is that my fantasy? Yeah. I was like, because for the. Good. Slade the Spire 2 is good. I recommend that if anybody likes rogue like deck builders or if anybody likes Slade the Spire 1, play Slade the Spire 2. It is a better game all around and it's prettier. It's got a lot more art assets and it's got a lot more like variability. God damn, the RNG is killing me. Yeah. The RNG is just.

[00:32:03] The thing about those games is I was saying in our review. It's got me on that treadmill. It's got me on that treadmill where I'm just like one more, one more run, one more run. That's the funny thing. So apparently as much as I just love playing video games until 3 a.m. and regretting life, I guess I don't have that gambling like addictive gene because. Yeah. I play like Bellatro. You're not better than me. You're not better than me. I play Bellatro. I play Slade the Spire and people are like, oh yeah, it's like when you lose. I guess it's the same thing too, like Dark Souls.

[00:32:33] It's like, oh, when you lose, you just want to hop back in and get good again. Shit, not me. Yeah, I lose and I'm just like, I think I'm done. Yeah. Seriously. So with like, with Dark Souls, I get snuffed out by a Black Knight and I'm just like, yeah. I'm going to put this down for a few months. I'll come back to this later. I'll come back to this later. But yeah, that's it for everything we're playing. Anything else you want to touch on? Nothing as far as playing games. So yeah, we've hit everything up there. I guess before we get right into the actual topic itself, do you want to run through a

[00:33:02] quick update on our league, how we're doing? I know we have posted about it recently, but I don't think we've done a review on it in lieu of doing a like halfway through the year episode on it fully. I think we can just kind of do the highlights. Yeah, we can definitely do a highlight for everybody here. I'm not logged in on this computer, but we can go ahead and log in. I'm going to win. TLDR. That's it. I'm going to win. He's not down by 60 points or anything.

[00:33:28] I have Grand Theft Auto 6 and I have, what else is it? Trails in the Sky. Mm-hmm. And I have Fire Emblem, Fortune Meads, all of which are going to get 90s. You also have Doom the Dark Ages Revelations. That's going to be locked in for an 86. Do you know what the last two Doom DLCs did? Did you see what Doom the Dark Ages did on OpenCritic? Yeah, fine. Whatever.

[00:33:55] If Revelations comes out and it adds value to the game, then it's going to get even better scores. Doom Eternal had an 86. Yeah. The two DLCs for Doom Eternal were both in the 70s. I don't need this. I just need this to score. What did yours do? Diablo Lord of Hatred, 83, okay? I'll take 83. So as long as it does an 83, I'm good. As long as it is above 80, I'm happy. How much do you want to bet it's going to be 80 or under? Ooh, the hesitation. I'll bet you a pizza.

[00:34:23] I'll bet you a pizza that it's over 80. I'll take a pizza that works for me. Yeah. My only thing that I have bad for me is I think Tokan is going to hit, and I'm very upset about that. Yeah. But I also think for some reason Black Flag Resync is going to hit, and you counterpick that. So I think it's going to even out. I think it's going to hit a 70. What? Black Flag? I think it's going to hit 74. The most beloved Assassin's Creed game in the franchise. You're right. It's going to hit a 74. I really fucked up on that.

[00:34:52] I really, that was a, I thought it was going to get pushed, but then I remember, I didn't take into account that Ubisoft doesn't care about quality. They care about releases and timeframes and revenue generation, and I should not have bet against them. I just, we hadn't heard about it whenever I counterpicked it. We hadn't heard from them on it. So I think I definitely counterpicked too soon there. But hey, you know, Scarlet engagement. How about that? How about that? It's not coming out.

[00:35:22] It's not coming out this year. It might not. It's not coming out this year. It's still estimated. It might not. Probably 007. I honestly think I took a fairly decent gamble because I feel like 007 would have done well, no matter what. But I didn't necessarily expect it to get like almost 90s. Yeah. So an 88 was a huge hit for me, especially after. Did it start in the 90s when it first released? I think it did.

[00:35:52] That's my thing. And I'm not going to complain because ultimately this is all for points and none of it matters. We're not like, there's nothing here that we win actually other than bragging rights. Yeah. But I've had, you know, 007 that started off, I believe, in the 90s. And then I had, not meaning the hollower that's been in the 90s, but Zero Parades and Mixtape, right? All games that like kind of started off with like really strong 90s, like mid 90s, lower 90s.

[00:36:17] And then if you look into the little review things, it's like one review from one outlet. And it's always something like, everyone's like 80, 90, upper 80s, 80s, 80s, 80s. And then this one person is just like 49. This game is ass. And it drops in like five points. So I'm like, just like me for real. Like, listen, here's the thing. And we all know, especially to here at game, Friday Night Gamecast, we're not necessarily critics per se, but you know, we have our opinions. We have a podcast. We know how it goes.

[00:36:47] We're critics. We can call ourselves that. We can call ourselves critics. That being said, I'll respect another critic's opinion. It's an opinion that's subjective, et cetera. But it's just, it's always so interesting seeing these outliers and then trying to like look into it and be like, why is there such an outlier here for this, for that? And sometimes it's just this person doesn't like this particular genre or, you know, this person has like a history of kind of rating games lower than normal. The thing for me with 007 was the literal line.

[00:37:14] And I think you shared this with me where he was like, I just can't relate to James Bond. I don't like that. I can't relate to James Bond. He reminds me of the bullies from high school and it's like, bro, it's, he's a fucking fictional character. You're not supposed to relate to him. He's not supposed to be like you. You're fucking overweight and you type at a desk all day. All right. No, sorry. Sorry. I'll take it back. I take it back. You said James Bond is not a real person. He's not. You're not supposed to relate to him.

[00:37:41] And it's just like for people to be like, I don't really see myself in the shoes of a person, a person in MI6 who goes around the world and is like technically a serial killer if you really, you know, wrap it up. Yeah. That's supposed to be. But anyway. So yeah. The fall on that. Very happy with that one. Happy with the replaced counterpick just because I thought that was also a gamble. Because that game looked good. So I was like, only reason I counterpicked is because one, I had to pick something and we all have a bunch of bangers on our list.

[00:38:11] So it's more like taking the, you know, the best poison versus picking something that's actually bad. Yeah. And then I was like, I don't know the developers, so I don't trust them. They did Mullet Magic, which scores really well. Which is crazy because I love Mullet Magic. So even if, so I'm kind of glad I didn't hear that because otherwise I probably wouldn't have counterpicked it. But yeah, very, very good. And then, you know, got a negative seven, which is not good as far as the game. I'm sad the game didn't get higher, but even then people who have played it has still said it's worth playing and it's fun.

[00:38:41] I will eventually get around to it on Game Pass. Just too many hype games right now for me to jump into. Not to bring it up too many times, but he's the homie. He's the homie. But you know, he's the one, he both, he and Nate played through it. And he says that it's like 77 is not representative of how good that game is. That the story is really cool. That the combat is precise. Um, and I think it's just one of those games where you have to be okay with a pace because it's a slow paced game. Uh, so you have to do that. But anyway. Yeah. What about yourself?

[00:39:11] What are you most proud of slash kind of like on definitely? Okay. So like replaced, I mean, that pissed me off because like I expected that to do well just because it just, I, you know, I love, I love the kind of post-apocalyptic cyberpunk aesthetic that you kind of, that they were going for here. Um, and it just flopped. Um, Tomodachi life, living the dream. Like what the hell? I should have, uh, should have. Like you should have, you should have realistically like you should have, you should have counterpicked that instead of token. But I mean, I didn't, I didn't draft it. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:39:40] It wasn't drafted. It was, um, yeah, you had to make do with what you could, but yeah, definitely Tomodachi is just a, yeah, that, that really hurt. Cause it was one of those where I picked it up very close to releasing because of the hype, the buildup, everybody was like, oh my God, I'm excited for Tomodachi. And, uh, yeah, people didn't show up for it or people didn't like what they had to offer this iteration. So only a 79 out of a hundred. So yeah, definitely a little bit of a bummer there. I will say though, um, for the horizon six safe pick. Yes.

[00:40:10] Incredible that I got that incredible that I got that around to it. It's wild to me that you picked Wolverine over a fours of rise. It's funny. I, I feel like you, cause you said that before, but I was like, I knew for it was going to do well, but I just know that these first party, you know, Sony games, they normally have a bunch of hype behind them. They normally all hit upper eighties, 85 at the worst. So I'm like, I knew Wolverine was going to be, and I knew for sure it was coming out too. It's going to score well. It's going to score well, I'm sure.

[00:40:39] Uh, and it's definitely going to come out. I was just, it's one of those things where like playground games have just, they've got that high score for so long that it's almost like a, you know, yeah, min max, whatever, whatever the case may be. But yeah, a little bummed at Saros. I feel like 87 is really good, but it's like, I feel like it could be higher. I don't even remember what return it was, but I feel like returnal couldn't been much higher than that. I felt like when it's Saros came out, um, I heard nothing but glaze over how great of a game.

[00:41:05] It's like how incredible it was and how much like they leveled up in the story because I think the, uh, story with return on serene, I think is the name of the, the astronaut. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Pretty sure. The lead character. Um, S for sure. Definitely. Yeah. So I heard that it was like very little unapproachable, little esoteric. Um, and that one. And then this one, of course, is Rahu Koli kind of at the, at the, at the lead. It's funny though, because I heard a lot, nothing but good things about the Saros gameplay and everything.

[00:41:33] And then once people started getting a hold of the story, of course, all like the worst actors came out of the woodwork and Twitter. They're just like, Oh my God, blah, blah, blah. I'm not gonna spoil anything, but they were just like blue, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. With Saros? Really? With Saros. Yeah. Oh, but it's, you're playing this guy, you know, what do you, what do you have to get woke about? The story, like how things happen with him. Oh, interesting. People were just like, Oh my God. And I don't know if that affected the score or not, because I mean, still 87 is incredibly strong.

[00:42:01] So I would imagine no, but I know that's where a lot of the discourse went. And I feel like that's probably why it's dropped off a little bit now. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. But yeah, no, I think my best games are yet to come between. For sure. GTA 6, Fire Emblem, Tocan. I feel like those are all going to be bangers. Duskbloods, I'm very confident is going to come out this year. I think I read a thing that they're still targeting summer. For Duskbloods. Well, I know it can't be summer because they said that. Well, that's not true.

[00:42:29] It can't be because I know they tend to do networks. They do the network test and then they release. Yeah. So yeah, I know the network test is coming out in the summer. So we could be looking at August. I'm curious to see because they're having a state of play soon. I don't know if it's like before the summer's over or right after the summer or what for Phantom Blade Zero. They announced it during the state of play. If it moves. Yeah. So I'm curious to see if during the state of play, they show you a bunch of cool stuff. They say, look how great this is. They already delayed it at the last state of play. And then they go 2027.

[00:42:59] No, they wouldn't. They wouldn't delay it and then delay it again. I wouldn't think they would either. But between them putting out Wolverine in September. Well, it's not a PlayStation first party studio game. So it's like, you know, they're just. But they're just putting a lot of hype behind it. Yeah. I mean, they're kind of partnering with the team, I think, to kind of publish it and everything. So, you know, we got to get a Souls-like in there somehow. You know, if we were not, we don't get the Miyazaki Duskblood, you know, glaze. So they got to.

[00:43:28] They got to fit it in. Package it in somewhere. So they got to do. I have faith that Phantom Blade is going to come later this year. So and I hope because I don't have any. I don't know if you've noticed, but they updated the UI on the. I saw that. So now it tells you everything. I don't have any fucking drops left. Yeah. I saw no drops and then $20 in budget and eight release, 10 expecting. Yeah. But I bid on orbitals. So spoilers for later this week for 21 hours from now, I bid on orbitals. So I think I'm going to grab that in our league.

[00:43:58] I think that'll be a good get. Yeah. I think it's going to definitely be good. So I'm hoping that I can definitely make up for some of these bamboozled picks. Yeah. Because you got two spots left. So you got orbitals and then you're just going to hold until September. I think we got one more. I think that. I got one more in me. I think we got one more in me, Arthur. I think we're going to have that. But yeah, definitely, definitely looking, looking forward to the rest of the year for sure. I'm nervous. I'm nervous. I'm still waiting for that. Zelda will save me.

[00:44:28] Zelda will save me. We'll see if it saves you because they got a nice little flag there. This game's final tag is still to be determined. I know that doesn't matter for our league. Yeah, it doesn't matter for us. But it's still, it's interesting that this could mess up some people if they're doing like a no remakes or a no reimagining type of situation. Yeah. It definitely could. But I mean, I wouldn't have, if I was a betting man, I wouldn't bid on Ocarina of Time being a reimagining. Anyway, just because that's kind of like what Nintendo does.

[00:44:56] I feel like they don't, they don't like fully re-imagine games unless it's like a, unless it's just a brand new thing, right? That's true. I don't feel like they've ever done it before because like it was a Metroid Prime that was like a pretty one-to-one, the Metroid Prime remastered thing that they did. So I don't know. Are you hyped for Wings of Thief? Of course not. No, not at all. Ladies and gentlemen, I can't, I can't tell you how much that pains me in my heart. If it makes you feel any better, it probably won't do more than 84.

[00:45:27] Don't you dare. You take it back right now. You take that back right now. You think Ace Combat 8 is going to get a 90? Look up Ace Combat 7. Ace Combat 7 got like an 86, I think. I think. Let's look at Open Up Critic. We're opening up Open Critic right now. Ace Combat 7. Ace Combat 7 did great. And the other Ace Combats rip. They're awesome. I'm not saying they're bad games. They're really good. Okay, so 81. All right. Yeah. Okay, that's what I'm saying.

[00:45:56] I'm not super hyped that Ace Combat 8 is going to give me like a banger. That was kind of more of like a dagger to you. I was like, I'll just get it because he wants it. He's just twisting the knife. He twisted the knife. I was just doing side quests at that point. He took control from me. He took Resident Evil from me. Control from you. He took Resident Evil from me. He took control from me. He's just twisting the knife. He could have done all. He took Mina the Hollower from me. I did take Mina the Hollower from me. God, you've gotten some, you've got to be really, really strong. You've got to be a strong roster, man.

[00:46:25] Like genuinely, like you have a bear. And you know what the problem is? You know, the part of this is just the luck of the like luck of the draw in terms of like the picking system. Like I got what I got when I got it and I'm happy with a lot of the games that I got. But definitely like I feel like I'm behind the eight ball in terms of some of the some of the like the later games that I picked because like I have these two slots left and I just like I don't know what's what else is going to come out.

[00:46:56] And I and you know what genuinely I was going to mention this earlier. We can move on after this because we've got more to talk about, but I should have doubled down and fucking counterpicked Crimson. I could I should have counterpicked John Crimson like I did in the other league and that would have done so much better for me. And I can't believe that I didn't do that because it was what your third overall pick. Yeah. Yes, it was. I should have I should have stuck to my guns. I didn't want to hurt you anymore. That's because I feel like I've been hurting you so much with the constant John Crimson

[00:47:25] hatred that was just flowing out of my mouth constantly. So I was like, I can't I can't hurt him too badly after I turn the other cheek. Thanks for turning the other cheek. You're welcome. All right. You ready to talk about some of these showcases? Yes, sir. Let's get into the summer showcase roundup. We'll be right back.

[00:48:03] Okay. So starting off with the state of play, I kind of have these in order in which they were released. So we're going to talk about them in order. Quick call out. So we're talking about basically everything that we are excited about that we've seen at a lot of these showcases that have released here recently. We are not going to talk about all the games because that's fucking boring. That and is too many games. Yeah. We'll be here all night. There's too many games. So we're going to get really hype over all of the stuff that we've seen and that we're ready for and stuff that I've already mentioned.

[00:48:33] I'll go ahead and start us off here. Talked about Wings of Thief. There's a certain eight. There's a certain pink haired pilot that has just taken the internet by storm that we are just so excited to see how that plays out in the game. And Debs, if you want a 10 out of 10 from Friday Night Gamecast, just put a manic pixie dream girl in your video game and Nick will fall head over heels. He's not wrong. That's all you need. See, Kanisha, you know, she read me for filth when she was on the show. A hundred percent.

[00:49:02] She was like, Nick, stand up. Okay. Stand up. Stand up. She's right. Put that voice clip in there. She's right. I'm not going to do it. I'm not going to do it. I won't. I won't. She can step on me. No, I'm really excited for Ace Combat 8. It looks like there's going to be more space elevator shit going down, which is exciting. I think it's going to be really cool. I think they're going to put more experimental planes in the game. I mean, I just love cranking like, you know, six G's. A couple G's.

[00:49:30] And a couple G's in a F-22 Raptor. Are you kidding me? Like F-26. Like, forget about it. Come on through Tom Cruise. It's going to be so good. It's going to be so good. So, oh, in Ace Combat 7, they have a Top Gun Maverick DLC build-in pack. Oh, so you knew about that. Okay. I'm aware. I'm aware. Your little flying games. Your little sim flying games. I'm going to make you play with me. No, you're not. I already played with you. I downloaded 7. I think it was after I did the whole pick of 8 thing. It was right before, right after.

[00:49:59] I downloaded 7 because it was on like Game Pass or something. So I was like, let me try this out. I don't want to hear you finish the story. I don't want to hear it. No bueno. No. It's so good. I did not have a good time. It's so good. I'm flying in circles. I'm shooting people that are taking way too long to kill and they're like, oh, we're going to put you over the Pacific. It's a gigantic slab of air. Have fun doing nothing. I'm like, okay. Maybe later on when we start getting like legitimate objectives, not just shoot bad guy, the game gets fun.

[00:50:28] But right now I'm just like, you got to crank up that difficulty. You got to play on harder modes. Why? So they can be spongy planes? No. It's even harder to target. You got to make sure. It's dog fighting. You got to dog fight. Okay. Nick, I'm not saying it was boring. I'm saying it wasn't fun. I hate it. Let's move on. Okay. My heart hurts so badly hearing you say that. Anyway. But your other game though, your next game that you have on here. Dude.

[00:50:56] I've been looking at this game for a minute because it's been floating around in the sphere for a couple of like years. And most people understandably so because of how it looks have been like, oh, this is fake. This is not real. Yada, yada. But ill looks pretty nuts. It looks sick, dude. It looks sick. We're both suckers for really visually interesting first person shooter games. And that's what this is in spades. I think it's come. I could be wrong. I feel like this is coming from Mundfish Studios.

[00:51:27] That did the Atomic Heart. But I don't think it's the same team. I think that's like maybe a publisher group if I'm not mistaken. So I don't know if this is the same dev team. It certainly looks a million times better than Atomic Heart in my opinion. And then it's just like, I think they're really leaning into the body horror. Team Clout. Team Clout. Okay. Sorry. Sorry. Yeah. Definitely. Different studio, different team. But yeah. I think I'm just, I'm really interested.

[00:51:57] And I mean, like, it's kind of like what Chris from a novel console said in our Discord. It's like, if you get to kick babies and the babies become physics objects, hitting other objects in the room. I mean, what's more fun than that? It's fantastic. The demon babies. Not real. Yeah. Not real. Not real. We don't kick babies right here. We don't co-sign on that. Demon babies, all for it. No. So ill looks really sick. Yeah. Like the headshot thing was knocked off like a chunk of his head. Talk about it. Oh, it's great. And I appreciate it. And the thing that's like stalking him in the sewers too. It was nasty.

[00:52:26] And I appreciate it too, because we were watching it, you know, live and, you know, folks, if you didn't see on the Instagram, what have you, we had a chance to actually go out to Raleigh. Yes. And we watched the State of Play in a theater. We did a little bit of Friday night game cast bingo. So hopefully you were on the Discord and you had a chance to, you know, tune in for that. Nobody got bingo because I was completely off everything. It was happening at Summer Games Fest, apparently, versus what was actually there in the State of Play. That's right. But we had a really good time. We got to see stuff.

[00:52:53] But I think part of the reason for ill, they blurred some genitalia, is because it was in a theater, not just like online. So they were like, we're going to have to censor this. The public is going to see this. In classic American fashion, I watched a person, thing, what have you, get shot in the head and half of his face get blown off in full visual detail. Right after, by the way, watching Wolverine rip people to shreds. Oh, in the most brutal fashion.

[00:53:23] In the most disgusting, claws through the face, blood spraying everywhere. But they were like, you cannot look at this penis. Oh, no. No penises. No penis. No hog in the chat. None. No hog in your own, man. No, absolutely not. And I was like, oh, because you know this is America's 250th birthday when it's like, no genitalia, but we will show you the most violent, you know, fear-inducing gore you've ever seen in your life. We love hyperviolence. It is. We love hyperviolence. American is Apple High, baby.

[00:53:50] Tell me how you felt about ill as far as like the visuals looking at it. And I don't know if you like saw it before if this is really your first time getting like a look at the game itself. No. I remember when it first debuted at an earlier state of play. I think it was last year. It was either like a middle or towards the end of last year when it first debuted. And I remember it looking very visually striking. It was a lot darker when they first showed it off. Like they just leaned into it being like creepy, weird body horror.

[00:54:16] Whereas this seems like a much more robust look at, okay, he's moving through these levels. The main characters doing these certain things. There are going to be other NPCs that you're talking to, maybe teaming up, maybe, you know, antagonists that, you know, might work against you while you're there. So you definitely, it looks like a more feature complete experience. But yeah, just the feeling of dread. Like it's going to give me a lot of like Resident Evil vibes in terms of being in those like small

[00:54:43] corridors, dealing with like monsters, dealing with these gross, creepy things. I think it's going to be fun. I think it's going to be fun. We'll see when it comes out, if I'll have time for it. It's true. Either way, I hope that people who are like really hyped for this game enjoy it. But yeah, last thing I wanted to talk about on the list is the thing that you're going to hear us talk about a lot, probably later this year around the September time frame. That's Control Resonant, baby. Did, okay.

[00:55:12] Now the thing is, is that we've seen Control Resonant before. The first reveal with Dylan Faden being the protagonist and him whipping out that big ass hammer and smacking some of the hiss around, you know, we popped off for it. We've seen a lot more here at the showcase. Did this do anything more to sell you on it than you already were sold? Yes, very much so. Okay. Every time they show this game off, I get more and more hype. Like the hype levels are through the roof, especially too, considering the first time they showed the trailer,

[00:55:41] a part of it, or I would say a big part that I walked away from and really loved and stuck with me for days was the music. Yeah. I love the song they used in that initial trailer. I went to go like played it back to back to back. I did the thing because they never, I think even to this day, haven't dropped the song by itself from the original trailer. So I had to wait for somebody for like a week later to rip the song out of the trailer. I think I tagged you in a song that I put in our server. There you go. Yeah. And then so the same deal for this one for the State of Play.

[00:56:09] And luckily they dropped the song on here on Spotify right afterwards and it's been on daily rotation. Like it's just the music I can tell is going to be so good, which is why when I saw they had the deluxe edition drop, I'm wavering back and forth, especially considering nowadays a deluxe edition and you don't get a ton of stuff. It's just like a little blah, blah, blah. But part of it was you're going to get the digital soundtrack in the deluxe edition of Control Resonant. And I was like, I must own it. Did I buy the deluxe edition? You bought the steelbook edition, but I don't know if you got the deluxe. That's what I was telling y'all.

[00:56:37] I was like, I was in the chat with Matt Storm. Shout out to Matt Storm and Nick here. I was talking to everybody and I was like, I'm going to have to get the steelbook because I need the steelbook. But I'm also going to have to get the deluxe edition because I need the soundtrack and I honestly want the art book. I would prefer a physical art book, but I'll take a digital art book. So I'm going to get B-O-F-F. Both. Both of them. Yeah. Yeah. I'm really excited. Yeah.

[00:57:07] Basically, after the showcase, I went and then went there and then they post the pre-orders and I got the steelbook edition. I'll be happy with the steelbook. I've kind of I've spent my budget on collector's editions here recently. Was that what's called not a face weave, right? So I bought. Yeah, I didn't think I was going to get it, which was why it's only $100. It's only $119 is not that much.

[00:57:31] And it comes with an art book and it comes with a steel case, which Nintendo never does, which is really exciting. And then they have the tarot cards, which they always do for Fire Emblem. So I'm happy with it. I'm definitely happy with that purchase. And then I also spent a little bit of the bag on the Persona 4 Revival collector's edition. You did get it. That's disgusting. Getting a collector's edition for a remake or like a. Hell yeah.

[00:58:02] You're about to say it rocks, right? You're about to say I'm the coolest guy ever. Something like that. You're about to say I'm awesome. To be fair, though, I can't really talk that much trash because I saw the Halo combat advanced or whatever they call it thing. It looks good. It looks kind of nice. It looks kind of nice. I'm not going to get it. No, they haven't proved themselves to me yet. So yeah, definitely Atlas and the Intelligent Systems teams. They deserve my money and I want to see those franchises continue. So we continue. How about your state of play? Big call outs. Nice. Nice.

[00:58:32] So before we get too deep into it, I do want to say I think you're low key, right? Ish when it comes to the thing with Munfish for ill. Oh, really? I saw Team Clout because I looked at Steam initially and was like Team Clout, Team Clout. And then, you know, no shout out to AI. So not to be fully trusted at all, but I wanted to go Google Team Clout because I wanted to see what else they did. One of the things it said here was the studio is backed by Munfish, which is a label from the creators of Atomic Heart. So it could be true. Could not be true.

[00:59:00] Gemini could be lying to me, which is probably very accurate because all AI is evil. That being said, I was really looking forward to and very happy to say Onimusha, Way of the Sword is legit. One of the things that I first did when we had our fantasy critic, once again, Capcom does no wrong. So I see Capcom, I hit play. And that's exactly what I did with Onimusha. With a demo. Yes, with a demo.

[00:59:26] After the showcase, they showed a little bit at the State of Play and then they were like, demo available now. Yep. So I went home, downloaded the demo, played it a little bit the next morning before going into work. Awesome. Fantastic game. Before work. Before work. A little Onimusha for breakfast. Hey, magically delicious. Breakfast of champions. The breakfast of champions. A little Musashi Miyamoto. A little Musashi. The game is very, very legit.

[00:59:53] So if you like the old school Onimusha games, it plays still very well. It's just, I mean, Capcom is getting so good with this too. They just take a game that's like, hey, you know, a really fun video game from like the 90s or early 2000s? Why don't we just take that? We make the gameplay polish so it's modern. And then we also make it pretty. Who would think that a game people like 20 years ago, they'd like now? Who would have thought? Nuts. Who would have thought? Nuts. Not me. You know, they're doing a great job with Onimusha.

[01:00:23] It's so cool too because there's so many different like things you do in there. The defensive capabilities for that game are through the roof. Really? You have your classic blocking. You have a parry. You have a directional parry. There's just, you can pick up these little boards and then have enemies that are shooting arrows at you and then push the board away to give yourself like some cover as you're running towards them. Yeah. I feel like it's a blast of a game and I just want to really dive into it and continue to

[01:00:50] play more, unlock more skills, unlock a little bit more traversal things, especially to fighting the boss. You have a boss at the end of the demo that is not particularly hard. I would say playing on the standard, which is like the action difficulty, I think was what they call it. None of it felt too difficult, which some people will probably complain about in the future. I'm sure the Dark Souls purists will be like, this is, you know, the easiest walkthrough thing of all time. That being said, it's very fun game for me.

[01:01:17] I just had a good time with it and I'm excited to kind of master how the fighting is. I imagine somebody like, what's old boy's name? Like Munch118 or God, what is our homie from Twitter who does like all the cool combo? Oh gosh. I was thinking about him the other day and I haven't seen him in a minute. Yeah. You know, I feel like he's not. Yeah. No, he does all the, like the monster hunter and like cool, like bloodborne slow-mo action shots on Twitter. Yeah. I feel like it was something with an S that it started with.

[01:01:46] I can't remember off the top of my head now. Not Shinobi, but Shinobi's a reporter. Yeah, he's a reporter. But still, it will come to me after the recording and I'm going to sound dumb. That being said, I imagine somebody on Twitter, Instagram, what have you, getting a hold of the combat. For sure, some really cool stuff. Just really good combos, like, you know, no hit moves, no hit like strings of fighting different enemies, doing really cool assassination attacks on enemies. So I'm excited to see how that game progresses. Another one.

[01:02:13] And apparently this is just a showcase of things from my childhood that are now making miraculous comebacks because I saw what was the initial Fast and the Furious startup. Yeah. And we were both like, oh, look, you know, it's Fast and the Furious. It's another game. It was like a 30 second car or something like that. I was like, okay, it's cool. Like Fast and the Furious game. We've seen those before. That's not bad. Yeah. And then it transitioned to Knight Rider and I immediately was like, you're like, what? Is this stunt man? I didn't even know what was happening because I had no frame of reference for this franchise ever. This is so nuts.

[01:02:42] It's just such an obscure reference, like an absolute reference, but obscure like franchise. Like I think they haven't had a game. Like maybe they had a PS3 game, but I think it honestly stopped at PS2. I know for sure it started at PS2. And then it was so it was Kit. And then I think from there went to Miami Vice and I was just like, oh, this is definitely stunt man. So yeah, super cool. It was back in the day. You would do things like this and they had some tie ins to like movies, TV shows, et cetera. But it would be just like it sounds you're playing as a stunt man.

[01:03:11] You have objectives to do for like stunts that you're doing a certain scene out of a movie. Or of course, if it's more of just like the actual unique to that game thing, they set up some cool stunts for you to do as the stunt man. And the whole thing is just do it well. There's side objectives for you to unlock or to do as you're doing it to give you like, you know, your one out of three stars, et cetera. And that's the game. Very pure gameplay. Yeah. Something that you can really get in and out of, not spend a whole lot of time with.

[01:03:38] But I'm super excited for something like this. And later on, we're going to talk about another game from like my childhood that I'm just like, this is just the year of Will's childhood popping back up. But stunt man Hollywood had me like popping off my seat. I think I was like one of three people in the theater that was just like, oh my God. And like you said, you're next to me just like, this looks cool. Here we go. It's another game. Yeah. Stunt man. The last one here, it's a, I have it.

[01:04:04] I'm a little torn because I am excited for it because I love the first one. Rayman Legends. Fantastic. Fantastic game. It's still probably one of my top five like platformers of modern day, especially. Yeah. So I just, I just love that game between the actual story of the game itself, the completely fair difficulty. Like some of it's really, you know, ball breaking, but the majority of it, you can just get through in one go and it just feels very nice and cinematic.

[01:04:33] Even down to those super, super awesome music levels, which I still think about to this day doing like, um, whoa, black Betty bang. Right. Like it's just so cool. I remember there was a time period where I would have that game just on my hard drive forever effectively. And I would boot up that game whenever like a friend would come over situation. Oh, PS two. No, no, no, no. It wasn't that far back. It was like more modern. It was like PS four. Oh, really?

[01:05:03] Like Xbox one. Maybe when the first one came out. The good old days. Yeah. Pretty sure I played it on PlayStation four. Cause I think I had it on my, um, I got it for like free for like the PlayStation thing. Yeah. But regardless, I would have a friend like come over and they would come hang out, whatever. And I'd just be like, Hey, check this out. And I would just boot it up and like play through the level. And some people would be like neat. And you have some people that were legitimately like, Oh, that's really cool. And I was like, yeah, I know it's cool. So definitely one of the last things too.

[01:05:32] Like Sarah, like really enjoyed just like watching playing through, especially like those music levels. It was really fun. So that's cool. I'm not super duper excited. Cause even to the point where this game got released during the state of play, I was like legend still holds up. It does not need a reboot remaster, what have you. By the time the video finished, I was like, that looks really good. So, okay. Not mad at it. I think it's going to do well if it comes out and you got to pay money for it. I will not be getting it day one, but either later on when I see it on a steep sale or

[01:06:00] if it ends up on a PlayStation, you know, here's your monthly games or Xbox. It's coming to game past type of situation. I'll 100% play it because that game is very fun. Hell yeah. That's awesome, man. Yeah. Those are, those are all good games. So like, let me hear it. What do you, what do you think of Lafay? What do you, what's the deal with that? Where are you at with it? Because I don't know how to feel about it. Genuinely. I mean, the way I feel is that it's going to be a good game. Yeah. I will 100% play it. I'll probably get it day one.

[01:06:29] The only problem for me is that it's really leaning into that Sony. Hey, you're going to be doing a third person over the shoulder action game. Hey, you're going to have Kratos. What if you hit that? What if you hit that lever there? Yeah. You're going to have a buddy that's with you and assist in combat. You probably got to hit buttons to have no Frank attack. I'm a little, I'm a little skeptical. And I, I know this, I've said this before earlier, this episode in terms of the low hanging

[01:06:59] fruit. And I feel like there's a lot of like low hanging fruit critiques of like what we've seen. I feel like 20 minutes of gameplay is way too much gameplay. That was a long experience. Like we could have just seen the intro to her like, or in like maybe some quick cuts of her fighting that one, the fire God or whatever that she was fighting in the beginning. But like, I feel like the, the, there, there is definitely like Marvel quirky millennial writing that's in this game. That's like, for sure.

[01:07:27] Very cringe in the big two six that I feel like we don't need to, we don't need to revisit like Marvel covered that base pretty securely. That's a funny thing. You say that though, like I understand too. And I like to hope, of course, the writing, depending on the character is like a little bit changed. Everybody doesn't need to be quippy. So remains to be seen if that's the case. I do feel like this game has an opportunity to tell a really good story though. Oh, Deborah and Wolf was going to kill it. Like she's going to act well, but I'm just being, not even just like from the acting, like everybody, I think everyone's going to do their part and act well.

[01:07:56] I just mean from the stories perspective. I mean, we have a character who honestly, surprisingly enough, obviously you're talking about a game of gods, mythological creatures and people, et cetera. But she has mythic tales and qualities about her that we didn't necessarily know we were going to get a chance to witness and or see until now this game is coming out. But I mean, fighting Thor to a standstill and having that frozen lightning occur. Right. Right. Because we find that, we find that spot. Yeah.

[01:08:26] In Ragnarok. Right. And it was like, oh, that's when, you know, she was fighting Thor and that was like, you know, she was going toe to toe with Thor. The fact that this is a woman who I think when her and Kratos first like came across each other, like they had a brawl. Yeah. So, you know, somebody that can stand toe to toe with Kratos of all people. Right. Especially kind of like still angry man Kratos. Right. Yeah. He wasn't calm down. Yeah. He wasn't chill yet. So I feel like she has an opportunity to one, be a really fun and kind of fresh ish take on this gameplay.

[01:08:54] You saw the air combos, which is definitely not something Kratos does. It's very OG God of War. Right. Like God of War 1 and 2. Did he not do air combos? He did do air combos. Yeah. He would float up there and do air combos. So yeah. I listened to a little bit of the conversation with the director and she talked about, she worked on too. And so she talked about them borrowing a lot of the kit from the initial trilogy and bringing it forward to use with phase loadout. Which may play with how people say this is kind of setting up the Greek trilogy to be like a modern day thing.

[01:09:24] But still, I think the game is going to be good no matter what. It remains to be seen with some of the writing and like quippiness. It remains to be seen as far as if the story needs to be told. But I do feel like regardless, the story itself will be solid and it gives us a really cool opportunity to show off a couple of different gods where otherwise they may not get their own game. That's true. Like I personally would have preferred each Pantheon getting its own game and or series

[01:09:53] if possible and then kind of doing it that way. But I know that's not realistic, right? We're not going to do all the Egyptian gods in like a trilogy. We're not going to do all the Mesopotamian gods. They're probably not going to do all the Japanese gods. So they're like, let's just take a couple and jam them into this afterlife type of situation. So you're fighting a different couple of gods here and there. And I do like what some people were saying online where there's a high chance that you're going to come across some Greek gods who met an untimely end from somebody we know.

[01:10:24] So maybe it'll be a situation too where it's like, oh, you come across this god and he's helping you out and he's really cool with you. And then he finds out your... Oh, I can't wait to get back to my husband Kratos. And he looks at you like, who? You mean the guy who ripped off my head? Oh, Helios, what do you mean? Yeah, we're going to figure that out. So that's very exciting. I feel like there's definitely places we can go.

[01:10:51] But yeah, to be determined, hopefully we see a whole new look that gives us a new understanding of how they're going to characterize this game. But yeah, I think they've heard rumors that it's coming sooner than we think. Yeah, I feel like next year is likely. Next year is likely. Hopefully like mid next year. Next year is likely. I could see 28, but I mean, Sony has not really announced enough stuff in 27 to justify there being a big gap. I mean, yeah, that's my perspective is that I feel like what has Santa Monica been doing

[01:11:21] since Ragnarok that came out in 22? So I feel like 27 is a pretty good time frame if you've kept a solid core group of people on there. And Sony's been talking about trying to shorten that time span of development. So they really got to start putting out some games for the PS5 because I mean... Because they're about to be in the PS6. So... Jesus, I don't even know. Because the question is, do you think Le Fay and Intergalactic are going to come out in the same year? That would be crazy.

[01:11:51] That would be kind of nuts, right? I mean, that would be a good year. Yeah. I would think. It would be nice if Sony could have two like hype first party games that are going to come out in the same year, but they don't necessarily need to. Yeah. Right? So like, I guess... And I imagine that Naughty Dog is going to take whatever time that they want to take for Intergalactic. I don't know how much... I just don't know anything about that game. So I don't know what they would even be looking for in an experience like that. So we'll find out eventually on that. Let's move on to Summer Games Fest.

[01:12:21] Yep, yep. I'm going to run through this pretty quickly here. Resident Evil Veronica came and Will was there and I had his... I had Caro in my arms and I was jumping up and down. My wife Claire is back! My wife! So I'm really excited. Claire and Chris Redfield game. It's taking place after the events of Resident Evil 2 and Raccoon City. Technically Resident Evil 3 as well.

[01:12:49] So this is a really cool, interesting interlude and I'm really glad that Capcom is digging into their bag of Resident Evil games. This makes me excited to see like maybe because I really don't want to go play the original Zero. So it would be cool if we get like Resident Evil Code Veronica. Then we get like a 5 and then we get like a 0 situation. That'd be great. What? What are you making a face at me? I can go back and play 0. It's not that old.

[01:13:17] It's like came out in like 2004. Yeah. The rest came out in 2004? It didn't already 4 came out in 2005? Or was it 2005? Half-Life 2? Yeah. Fantastic. Remember, you just love that game. They're not Valve. They were not Valve. You will never be Valve. They were not Valve back then. So anyway, that being said, I'm really, really, really excited for Alien Isolation 2. That's good. My pants will be shat. Indeed.

[01:13:45] My pants will need to be changed frequently. You gotta blow the dust off the Twitch account. That game looks scary. You gotta play the first one. Man. I'll stream the first one in the Discord. I'll stream. Let's go. Listen. This is another plug for the Discord. Join the Discord so you can see me absolutely lose my mind. Live and in color. The original Alien Isolation. Have you ever played the game? Either of them? Well, not either. Have you played the first one at all? No. Okay. Too scary. Too scary. Too scary for you?

[01:14:12] A first-person game with limited to no ways to fight back. You got some weapons. Too scary. Outlast? Too scary. Too scary. Amnesia? Too scary. I'm gonna play Soma because too many people have said Soma is like peak video game, but very scary. So. I'm so excited for Spooktober this year. Spooktober is gonna be lit this year. I'm gonna put some mods on that bad boy. It's gonna be, it's gonna look nice. It's gonna look beautiful. So yeah, Alien Isolation 2 coming out. I don't know if we got a date on that. Don't remember.

[01:14:42] It doesn't really matter. It's coming out soon. Yeah. Final Fantasy 7 Revelations. Yeah. Yeah. It's like, okay, let me say this right now. I am ungodly excited for Final Fantasy 7 Revelations. I'm really excited to see. I don't know how the Final Fantasy 7 story ends. All I know is what Advent Children is. And according to everyone that cares about Final Fantasy 7, Advent Children is kind of a bastardization

[01:15:08] of like what actually took place at the end of the game of the original Final Fantasy 7. So I'm really excited to see what they do here. The remake trilogy is more of like a sequel to Final Fantasy 7 according to what a lot of people have talked about because of how much they're changing kind of like integrally with like what the way that the story was originally told. There are multiple timelines. Tessi Nomura, somebody needs to stop him.

[01:15:37] Stop him, please. Whatever we need to do. He needs to be, he needs to be finished. So anyway, but I think that this trailer was really weird and bad in a lot of different ways. It was like we got three trailers in once and I didn't need to see that shit. All I needed to see. Just drop the title. All I needed to see is I needed to see Elevator Vincent drop from the thing. And all I needed to see was Cloud whip out that buster sword. Sid the goat.

[01:16:04] And I needed to see Sid and I needed to see Sephiroth. I needed to see Daddy Roth with his giant sword on screen, say Reunion. And here we are. Here, folks. Nick just needed to see All Men. Listen. No Tifa. The Bible. No Yuffie. Bible fans are so back. You know, we got Revelations. We got Exodus. Xenoblade Genesis. We got Genesis. We're in there. We're so back, Bible fans. I need Psalms right now. You know, Sarah Yelvington might get into gaming after all. You know what I mean? It's terrible. I'm kidding. I'm kidding.

[01:16:33] I'm kidding. I'm kidding, Sarah. Anyway. So, yeah. No, I'm really excited. I'm excited for this game. But, yeah, definitely a weird way to show it off. I didn't need this weird, like, Matt Mercer, Hamaguchi back and forth on stage. Like, just give me a trailer and shut the fuck up. They were capturing that light, not lightning in a bottle, per se, but they were capturing the spirit of E3. That's what they were doing. Which, to be fair, this summer felt like E3. Yes. But that means we got some E3 things that aren't so great. So, it's like, you know, people pretending to talk to each other on stage.

[01:17:02] One thing we didn't get, which I guess it was nice, is the whole people playing a co-op or a multiplayer game and pretending to be talking, I'm going to go check the upstairs bathroom. You guys stay down here and protect the perimeter. I feel like we've learned. I feel like we've graduated from that. We've gotten away from that. Yeah, we've gotten away from it. So, yeah, it's a little bit better. So, your SGF? My Summer Games Fest picks. So, a lot of things here that, once again, kind of like my, you know, last one with the Rayman Legends. Stuff that I'm not, like, super duper hype on. Because you picked some really good ones.

[01:17:31] So, out of yours too. No, no, no. You don't have to apologize. Because, I mean, it's all good. It's a great show. It was a great show. We're all winning. Also. Veronica is going to look good. Isolation is going to look good. Not to cut you off. Yeah. But, like, shout out to Jeff Keighley for absolutely mogging Sony by ruining their long-standing relationship with Square to have Final Fantasy revelation. The one more thing. Final Fantasy is nice. Yeah. But one more thing, Final Fantasy, but also for them to be, like, everywhere. Yeah. Releasing everywhere.

[01:18:01] So, it's like, it makes sense tactically for them. The bag wasn't deep enough. Yeah. It wasn't deep enough. It wasn't deep enough. Which is funny because that's one of the things, well, not to get too far off. I know we're running a little long. But, you know, the game comes out for PlayStation. It sells well. Like, remake and rebirth. And then when it comes out a year later on Xbox, I don't know if they're going to say it's because the hype has died down or what. But, I mean, it doesn't ever really sell as well on Xbox. So, I always thought it didn't matter that it didn't come out initially on Xbox because

[01:18:28] the Xbox sales weren't tipping the scale like that. Old game is old, right? I mean, yeah, but this technically is an old game. It's 7 remake. You know how these people are. Yeah. You know, they have the attention span of a teensy fly. Shit gone. But my summer games, first games, Gen Atlas looked great. I mean, it's... Are you a Team Ico guy? Yeah, yeah. I know you play. I remember you playing The Last Guardian. Played The Last Guardian. I enjoyed The Last Guardian. I played through the Shadow of the Colossus. Okay.

[01:18:58] Shadow of the Colossus. I didn't play them when it originally came out, but I played the... The remaster. The remaster, yeah. And it's very, very good. Awesome. I would love to get a sequel or maybe even like an updated version. Something like that would be great. Way back in the day, never beat it, but I played Ico itself. Loved it. It was really cool. Just did not have the attention span as a child to beat that game considering it's a giant... Not fetch quest. What do they call the... Oh, God. What do they call it when you're just traveling with somebody? You know, it's like Resident Evil 4 except you don't get to fight back as well.

[01:19:27] You know, you're just dragging along. Wow. Like a girl with you. So like Death Stranding. I mean, yeah. Effectively. Yeah. But yeah, it's like you're just dragging on a girl and you got to fight off the shadow monsters. And if the shadow monsters ever get the girl, then you lose. So it's... It was one of those things. I feel like you had to be a little bit older to like really appreciate it, but still very good game. That being said, Gen Atlas looks cool. It's Gurren Lagann meets Ico. And I was like, I'm here for it. You get the robot head that you're flying around like you're Simon and then you plug the robot into a robot body. So cool.

[01:19:57] And then you get to stomp around. It looks so visually striking. And I think people have said that one of the things about Gen Atlas that kind of took them back was that there was these moments of him like shooting. And usually in those games, you don't really... Yeah, no. It's melee focus. You're just not really combat like that. But I mean, it looks like he's going for a different thing in this one. Which I'm okay with. Yeah. Totally okay with it. I get to fight his mechs. That's what I'm saying. Take my money. And eco game, you know. I remember too. I don't know. Was it Summer Games Fest or what game was that? Well, they had that Gundam game. Now I'm thinking about it. I can't remember off the top of my head.

[01:20:25] It was SGF because I saw it when I was preparing the doc today. My honorable engine. I'll use that. Gundam... Yeah, I don't remember the subtitle. But it looks sick. You're fighting like... Kaiju. Kaiju. Yeah. So sick. Acceptable. I'm going to seem like a phony LARPer or what have you. Stellar Blade Blood Rain looked good. I don't care. I don't care. Stellar Blade itself, I've been publicly eh on.

[01:20:53] Stellar Blade, the first game, is perfectly fine. Great game. If you love it, shout out to you for loving it. I played the demo and I was like, this game is mid. It's not mid. It's better than mid. Which is fine. Which is fine. You're allowed to be mid. It's 2026. It's not mid though. I think when the game came out, it was 24? Yeah, it was 24. It's allowed to be mid. You haven't beaten it. I got it downloaded. It's fine, bro. I got it downloaded. That being said, it's on the list. I saw Blood Rain.

[01:21:20] And first off, if you want to get me involved slash interested in your game. Combat, baby. Just some fisticuffs. All I need is one of these and one of these. Swords are awesome. Daggers are cool. Just give me hands. That's why I'm excited for Resident when they have the Beowulf equivalent where you're just sitting here punching people. I'm just like with big gauntlets. I'm just like, give me fisticuffs. That's all I want.

[01:21:47] So the second I saw her doing Dempsey rolls and punching the creatures and you're just like dodging like the fact I'm like, okay, all right, okay, you got me. You guys got me. You got me. I'm pre-ordered day one. So now I'm like, I guess I got to go play Stellar Blade to see if there's going to be any kind of connection to it. There will be. I'll. Confirmed. I will. I will eventually plan through there and then we're going to do our Friday night game cast review and I'm going to be like, oh, this game is great. Oh, I was such a fool. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. We got to get.

[01:22:16] We got to get Rick on the show. Oh, definitely. If we're going to review Stellar Blade, we got to get Rick. If you're listening. Yeah. You're, you're on the docket for it. So be ready for it. He's right in for it. And last one for me. This game. Okay. So this game. I was talking about hype earlier. I feel like there's hype here too, but it's like in the reverse. It's bizarro hype. Yeah. It's a game that has been hyped to hell and then died and never came back. And now it's like zombie hype. And there's no way a that it can live up to it. No way.

[01:22:46] And B, I think even originally it was not going to live up to it. It was going to be capital F fine. I'm still be there for Wolf Among Us 2. I love the first game. I had a great time. I'm a big Telltale guy. I like all the Telltale games that I have played. I have not played them all. I will not pretend to have been, but I played the Wolf Among Us. Wolf Among Us was great. That was awesome. And I'm excited for the second one when they ever get around to it. If ever. Yeah. Yeah. And they were like, in the meantime, here's the first game remastered.

[01:23:15] I'm like, focus on it. I'm like, focus. I'm like, focus. It's a Telltale game. We don't need it remastered. It's in a stylized version. What is there to remaster? Literally. Like, what? Are you going to make the button presses more intuitive? Talky talk. Like, what the fuck are we doing? Telltale? Oh, Jesus Christ. Sorry. Continue. They said, we just want some more money. I guess. Oh, God. They said, this game is pretty much done. Oh, fuck.

[01:23:43] They just like changed some of the words and they were like, remaster. No, no, no. I'm sure they did an actual legit remaster. I don't want to poo-poo them too much. But yeah, I would have rather you have focused on finishing two instead of giving us remaster. But who am I? We'll see. Who am I? They got to crowdfund the second one somehow. But outside of that one, though, the next one we had up in our time. So what Summer Game Fest was like on a Tuesday or a Wednesday? Something like that. And then X... Or was that on a Saturday? And then Xbox was on a Sunday. Yep.

[01:24:13] That sounds right. Yeah. Because we got together. Because it was Tuesday, stay to play. And then I think it was Saturday or Friday. One of the two Summer Game Fest. And we had to leave for the movies. Yes. Before. And then Xbox was on Sunday. So what did you see during the Xbox showcase that made you hype before all the terrible Xbox news? Yeah, they opened up with Gears and that was really cool. I mean, that was a good way to open up the show. I think this was a very strong showcase. I don't think people... I feel like, god damn it.

[01:24:41] Like a lot of my buddies are just like Xbox ride or dies. And they're like, this is a 10 out of 10. Never seen a better showcase. And I'm like, it was fine. It wasn't that good. I think it was surprisingly good for Xbox. For Xbox. And that's probably what some people were like hype on. Because normally an Xbox showcase pops up and you're just like, eh, whatever. Yeah. But this one had some surprisingly good things in it. Yeah. I mean, like there's definitely things to be seen here. And I think things to like keep your eye out for. Of course, everybody knows about Halo Campaign Evolved. That's like the first thing.

[01:25:11] I think the thing that really stood out for me about Campaign Evolved was that they had a focus on the new content that they were making, which is, I guess, a prequel of Chief and Sergeant Johnson doing like a run on a different Covenant battleship. Yeah. The new levels. That's a cool thing. I didn't think they were necessarily going to add in. So I'm pretty, I can't say excited because I'm not going to act like I'm buying it day one. But I'm interested in seeing how that improves upon the story of Combat Evolved or whatever they're calling it nowadays.

[01:25:41] Yeah, definitely. I think it's going to look really good. I'm curious to see how it plays. I think there were people who got hands-on previews of playing it and they said it feels like Halo. It feels like, you know, the way that you imagined the Halo to play back then, but just with the new visuals today. I really want them to nail, like I don't want them to play with the tuning of the classic game. Like I need that pistol to hit like a shotgun. True.

[01:26:08] I, you know, I definitely need to use that pistol like a sniper rifle. You know, I, I really need them to kind of like stay as faithful as they can to the spirit of the original while just giving us, you know, those new updated visuals. Maybe give us new enemy tech. Maybe the Covenant can move in new and interesting ways to flank us. There's just been, there's, I feel like there's probably been advancements in terms of how like AI works and how like these different characters, not like AI, AI, but like how like the game, the games are.

[01:26:37] Character models are going to like flank you and like respond to you in the, in the level. So yeah, I love Halo. I'm a Halo guy. I will play it this year. It's going to come to like, as we talked about before, it's going to come into game pass. Um, I'm just, I'm really hoping they nail it. And I want Halo studios to start making a proven track record of we can make these games the way that you want them. And you can feel like you're playing Halo again and not have issues.

[01:27:00] So yeah, that's my hope because man, we did that review of infinite and I am just not, I'm just not sold. Not, not at all. Yeah. I understand that. Uh, the next one that's like really, really hype, really big for me was persona four revival. Really excited here. Um, I'm going to tell you right now, I'm going to finish persona five and persona three reloaded before I play this. Uh, so the trilogy can get complete bet. I will, I will be both and I will be ball.

[01:27:29] Those three years ago. Listen, it's going to, it's, it's on Xbox. I'm going to buy it on Xbox. I think that's what I'm going to do. I'm going to buy it so I can finish my save on Xbox and then everything else is on PS five. So we have that there. It looks really cool. Uh, a lot of friends in our discord community and other, you know, podcasting community really love persona four. A huge shout out to bill from the gaming collecting podcast. He's a big persona for the golden fan P you know, P4 G.

[01:27:58] So yeah, he really, really likes it. The last one on my list that I'm actually really excited and I'm curious as to like, I feel like we might've yapped about this just a little bit, but something that stood out more than anything else in the showcase was the magician, the devil's deal. This looks really, really cool. I think that was surprising for me. It looks really interesting. It's a first person, it not a boomer shooter, but it looks like a first person like magic shooter, uh, kind of survival situation.

[01:28:26] They're using like basically the wand with spells and you have different attacks that you can do. So it's going to be some, it's going to be a lot of like usage of magic in this game. And it looks like the, you're a magician that's fighting against Satan to maybe escape hell. Uh, really interesting concept. Uh, I think it like visually is really interesting. Uh, some, some people have made comparisons like this looks some of the animations.

[01:28:51] It feels like it, all these Xbox games look the same, whether it's fable or clockwork revolution. It's like they all have that like plasticky kind of stop motion animated style, glossy, like shaded feel to it. So I, I agree with that assessment. I feel like it definitely has that sameness, but I think that this has like a real interesting like identity, like just kind of in terms of the feeling of the gameplay design, which is very interesting. So I'm curious to see this come out.

[01:29:21] I hope it comes out. Um, let's go ahead and make that happen. That's, that's really great. I'm always down for a new IP. So when I saw that, I was like, okay, I'm kind of keeping that in the back of my mind, you know, adding that to the memory bank just because I want to see it do well. I want to see how it pops up. Similar fashion to, I don't have it on my list, but just to kind of bridge the gap between the new IPs and then getting into mine for Xbox, like the clockwork revolution. I feel like I've probably gone on record in the past being like, it looks okay. Um, I'm not interested. Yeah.

[01:29:49] Even if it's an immersive sim, I'm not interested, but I just, anytime I see a new IP, I'm just like, you know what? I hope it does well, even if I don't want to play it. Right. Yes. The kind of thing was like, I don't want to, to be fair, any game, I don't want them to be bad, but especially any kind of a new IP that somebody sticks their deck out for and we can hopefully get like some kind of like a new draw on. I'm like, hopefully it does well. But yeah, um, that being said, going right back into the wheelhouse, baby gears of war E day, Xbox said, if it ain't broke, uh, remake it.

[01:30:16] So, or do a prequel or something, but we're, we're milking that cow again. Maybe we're getting gears of war. We know it's not going to stop. So do you, do you like the look of the like refresh gameplay? Oh, for sure. Slide in the mantle. It looks cool. I have thoughts regarding the wall bouncing because I'm me. Like you want the wall. I'm a day one gears of war. Oh, six guy. Like I remember when wall bouncing was created. Yeah. Yeah. You got on day one.

[01:30:44] Some people were running around with Lancers and acting like it was a cover shooter. And then like within the week, people were like, Oh wait, this is not how you play this game. Um, and that effectively changed the trajectory of that game for decades. So it's interesting now that they've said, Hey, we're going to do like a prequel and it's a setup and there's the next game in the franchise, et cetera. And they get rid of something that's been integral to this series for 20 years. Is it integral to like the campaign or is it integral to the multiplayer? It's the multiplayer.

[01:31:13] So, but the thing, if you take it out of the game period, I mean, it's going to affect the multiplayer. So yeah, our Lancers slash rifles are going to be like the new meta. Are people going to figure out, you know, some other kind of canceling maneuver, whether it be a dodge canceling or whatever it is in order to make the shotguns viable again. Cause that's always been gears in a nutshell is how quickly can I get next to you with a nasher? And that's how the multiplayer works. Gotcha. So besides that though, story wise, I'm very excited to see it.

[01:31:42] I love me some kind of prequel overall gameplay, some Dom and Marcus, the boys are back together. The boys are back together. So that's beautiful to see when I saw that. I was like, Oh, Dom, you're as beautiful as the day I lost you. So I'm a, I'm ready to spoilers for this 10 year old game. God, classic will spoiler situation. Classic, classic, but I'm excited to get back into it. You know, you've only read about things like this, like when they talk about SVO fields and things of that nature. So I'd love to get the chance to play through it.

[01:32:11] Seeing Ty again, the big home. Oh my gosh. Especially to the beginning of the, the scene of the chainsaw of him using the chainsaw on the, so the chains, this was like before they like attached to the chainsaw to the Lancer. Yeah. So it's like, he's got a handheld chainsaw and he's just mowing through people. That's so sick. So it's going to be cool seeing the actual Lancer as we know it be created in game. So that's going to be very interesting, that prototype Lancer. So I'm excited. They have a beta coming out soon.

[01:32:37] We're going to see very quickly how the multiplayer is as far as the new additions to it. Are people probably within the week going to figure it out a weekend, however long it is, figure out what the new movement tech is. And it's like wall bouncing never got taken away probably, but we will see. We will see how the new weapons and everything in fact that as well. That's true. Next one. Senua. I like the first game. We both talked about that. I think I played the first game before you did, and then you ended up playing it afterwards and you really enjoyed it.

[01:33:06] And then you went and played the second game. I still have not beaten the second game, but I enjoyed what I played so far. So I liked the series. Can't say as far as I love the series, but I definitely liked the series and I want to see it continue. Yeah. I was very happy to see this game because I was like, now I got a reason to go back and play two and then make sure I'm ready to go for the new one that comes out. And then we got the news that the company is being, you know, kind of shipped around to hopefully be bought. Otherwise it won't exist. It's going to shut down. Ninja Theory might get taken out.

[01:33:34] So hopefully somebody manages to pick it up and do well. I'd hate to have a hi-fi rush situation. But outside of that, though, just talking about pure gameplay and everything looks good. Kind of like how some folks are saying, so Skillup and some other people, it looks like it's more of a combat focus, which may not be the best considering combat wasn't really the focus of the first two. I think combat was the huge piece to the first two. The huge piece, but not the focus, right?

[01:34:00] It's definitely not the focus in terms of like what we want from Hellblade game. Yeah. I think that if they step away from puzzles in Hellblade, I think that probably would be best for them. We help them. Okay. Yeah. Like I feel like I think it would definitely help the experience. They could still have like light puzzles, like easy, just like move to put the thing on the pedestal, move through the sequence, whatever. Like just that's like maybe tied into the gameplay story. Figure that out to do that.

[01:34:29] But I think that if they just kind of make the core loop just be like combat narrative traversal combat, I think, and then they really nail the combat because the combat in two, I mean, you played the game. I like it. It's solid. It's good. It's not bad. I think that if you maybe add a little bit more versatility or you maybe kind of beefed up some of the systems that are in there in terms of maybe how the enemies attack her, I think that could be cool. Potentially new weapons because so far in the second game.

[01:34:59] I'm still having the sword, right? So you just have the sword. And that's what you work with the whole time. And then you get the move where you have the little lights on your back and then you can do like the unblockable attacks. And that's, you know, the extent of kind of like her repertoire, dodging, blocking, attacking, heavy attacking. I think the thing about the second one that was even, that was true for the first game, but even more true for the second game is that the action is very cinematic. For sure.

[01:35:29] Intended kind of similar to First Light where you're supposed to play it like you're an action hero. And I think that they could go even deeper into that and like, you know, people could be making those cool clips online too. So before I move on to my third one, that game we were looking at before Blood Message, that wasn't showing at a showcase, was it? It was. That was just... Which one? I think it was SGF, but don't quote me on that. If it was SGF, then I would like to formally remove Wolf Among Us and say Blood Message because Blood Message looks cool. Saucy. It looks very cool.

[01:35:58] You talk about like when you said cinematic fighting, I was like, I got activated like a sleeper agent. I was like, oh yeah, I forgot. I forgot that game looked really awesome. Anytime a game happens to where you get hit, I mean, Last of Us 2 did this too, but it's like if you get hit in a certain place or like you're hitting an enemy in a certain place and you have those environmental contextual things like you kick a guy and then he flips over the table all in a cinematic way or you get grabbed by a table and you get thrown down it and the plates and stuff go clattering everywhere. I'm like, this is cool.

[01:36:28] This is absolutely cool. Yeah. So shout out to you, Blood Message. Hopefully that game continues to come out and does well. Flip up the hype. Exactly. China's on a roll. They are. They're doing their thing. For every wo long, they have a Blood Message. So I'm happy there. They're Wu-Tang Fallen Feathers. They have Black Myth. That's right. That's right. They're batting 500, which is perfectly fine. We're overdue for another banger. Yeah, exactly.

[01:36:56] My last one here, my childhood coming back with a vengeance. Now, I never owned a Sega Dreamcast. Oh, really? That being said, had a friend, talked about him before, Steven Anderson. Fantastic guys. Still keep up with him a little bit on Facebook, Instagram, here and there. He had one, and I was at his house like every other weekend. We were playing fantastic games like Power Stone. We were playing Sonic Adventure 2.

[01:37:24] We were playing Seaman, where you make a humanoid fish person that turns into a humanoid frog person, and you get really creepy looking faces on them. Sounds great. We also played Jet Set Radio, which is fantastic. Love that game. Fantastic game. But more importantly, Crazy Taxi. Crazy Taxi is such a cool, just straight up arcade-y fun. You jump into it. You play with your friends.

[01:37:51] You get your little 60-second timer, and you run around picking up people as much as possible. Blast of a game. Nothing but good things. I can't think of a bad thing about the original Crazy Taxi in my head because it has such a high place as far as just being a video game-ass video game. So when they were like, oh, new Crazy Taxi. First off, before the showcase, they posted something on Twitter, which I guess now Twitter is the place to vague post and just be like, we're coming back. So I'm like, I'm here for it. That's fine. Yeah. And then they finally had it pop up on the Xbox showcase.

[01:38:20] Crazy Taxi World Tour, I believe it's called. Yeah, I think so. Looks so cool. Looks really awesome. I would like to get it day one. Will I? Probably not. Too many games coming out this year. But holy smokes, that game looks cool. I don't want to rain on your parade with this one. Don't say the AI thing. Don't say the AI thing. Okay. I won't say it. I won't overlook it. Every year you get one pass. He's going to look away. He's going to look. He's going to pretend like I didn't see that.

[01:38:47] Every year you get one pass that something is AI either produced or assisted and you get to be like, I'm going to pretend like I didn't see that. Crazy Taxi is my one. Crazy Taxi is my one. I'm using my one. All right. I'm using my one. We can be hype about it and just move on. That's fine. But I do want to take that second though. But yes, I understand like the AI thing is in there. I don't love that either.

[01:39:10] I would like to hope that it's kind of like what the dev said where it's, you know, either very lightly used and or placeholder items. And it's not, you know, the, we've seen some games like that. Even the game I talked about before. What the heck was that? Flipping West Winds Fallen. Oh, Where Winds Meet. Where Winds Meet. Hey, look at you. Yeah.

[01:39:34] Where Winds Meet where you have NPCs in the game that are AI bots that you talk to and you try to have a communication with them. I don't like that. And I'm like, that part was not great. Yeah. I was like, I tried for like a couple seconds. I was like, this feels gross. Yeah. Not fun. And then skip past it and did everything else. So, you know, they're in the game. I don't want to say we have to get used to it because we don't have to. Please continue to fight the power and let these devs know.

[01:39:58] So, if you're going to use anything AI related in the game, it needs to either be like way, way behind the scenes with, you know, zeros and ones, not art, not anything. No visual assets. Please don't procedurally load our levels with AI. Yes. Don't, I don't want any AI VAs, you know, please make sure you are paying these people the good work and the good money that they do for the jobs that they do. Yeah. Right. So, let's continue to have that done.

[01:40:25] That being said, I am excited for Crazy Taxi and hopefully they do not disappoint me. I don't think they, yeah, I hope they don't either. I hope they don't either. Sega, you know, they own that, right? Sega. Yeah. So, they push it out. That was originally on the Dreamcast. So, yeah, I think it'll, I think it'll be fun for people and they'll play it for two weeks and then that will be that. Yeah, I would not be surprised. Hey, it'd be great. It'd be a great time. It'd be a great time. Okay.

[01:40:53] But no, the Nintendo Direct happened. Basically, they said, okay, the kids had their fun. Now it's time for the grown men to have their conversation. Yeah. I watched a funny reel on Instagram.

[01:41:12] I don't remember if I sent it to you or not, but it goes a little something like lady is sitting at her desk and the text above her says, me, I'm definitely not buying a Switch 2. And then Nintendo colon. In the distance she like turns around. What? HR? Yeah, no, it's, they announced that they're coming out with an Ocarina of Time. We don't know what this is yet.

[01:41:42] We don't know if this is a full-blown reimagining. We did get a look at Link. We got a voiceover talking about the Kingdom of Hyrule being taken over. Of course, the understanding is, is that this is going to be, you know, the same story of the original game. Mm-hmm.

[01:42:00] If Star Fox 64 is anything to judge by, we're probably looking at a remake of this game as opposed to a reimagining where it is going to be that same core experience where Star Fox 2026 is just Star Fox 64. Yep. But just with a great brand new coat of paint on it and new visuals and new mechanics and everything.

[01:42:23] I imagine that Ocarina of Time is going to take the best of what we've learned from Tears of the Kingdom and Breath of the Wild and hopefully put it in that game. Not to the extent where they're changing the world or anything like that, but just mechanically how Link moves. I imagine that's what it's going to look like. There are people who have data mined the posting for the store page for Ocarina of Time.

[01:42:46] And they've seen like the part of the clips that have like the, it was unposted and then reposted with more simpler text. But the initial post that was written by God knows who essentially says like in the classic mechanics of the Ocarina of Time, which kind of led people to kind of assume this is going to be closer to a remake as opposed to reimagining. So I think it makes sense, right?

[01:43:11] You know, like, but I definitely want as much new stuff in this game as we can, because if I wanted to go play Ocarina of Time, there are allegedly sources online where I could play that in full 3D with new light illumination rendering. Allegedly. I don't know for sure or not, but allegedly. Never heard of it. Never heard of it. So yeah, Ocarina has come out. It's, I just want to stress for all of the listeners, that was one of like my formative games.

[01:43:39] It's one of the first 3D games I've ever played. It was formative to the N64. Fantastic game. There were some freaky parts of that game. Oh, for sure. And to see that in like a 4K visual texture updates, like some kids are about to have some nightmares. So I was more hyped to hope that they would do a Majora's Mask. I was like, that'd be sick. Could you imagine Majora's Mask and like modern day graphics with the moon? If this sells well, if this sells well, we'll have another Majora's Mask. We'll have a Majora's Mask 2027.

[01:44:09] I hate that Majora's Mask is contingent on Ocarina of Time doing well, which I mean, it will regardless. So it doesn't really matter. It's not like it's a gamble, but I'm just like, just give me Majora's Mask. It's the better Zelda. I said it. Whatever you say. Whatever you say. I will say this. I said this to the boys in the GameDuoPod server, but I imagine that they're going to come out with Ocarina of Time the week of Black Friday. And they're going to bundle it with a Switch 2 Special Edition. That's a smart call on your part, for sure.

[01:44:39] That was a smart call. They're going to bundle it. I still would like it to come out the same day as Grand Theft Auto. And there'd be like a nice little head-to-head. Oh, it would be great. That'd be awesome. That'd be great. I don't think they will, though. Just a domain expansion clash. Yeah. I would love it. Domain expansion. Yeah, the three that come out. Ocarina. What is it? What is it? You know, Grand Theft Auto 6. And then Barbie. Yes. Yeah, exactly. Ryuki Tenkite. Yeah, the biggest, the other big things that were coming out.

[01:45:08] You know, I've talked about Fire Emblem, Fortunes, Weave. Anybody who's listened to the show knows I'm a Fire Emblem sicko. This is the newest in the series. Mainline entry looks like a very serious title, unlike that fucking goofy-ass shit that was engaged. No more than we write. No, Marth, Weave Riot. Marth isn't in this continuum. I hate it. It's not in, he's not in this universe. I hate it here. He's not in this universe. Roy's our boy, anyway. Is Roy in this one? He was in Engage. Oh, okay. Wag. Yeah, he's in Engage.

[01:45:37] So, yeah, last but not least, Final Fantasy Resonance. What did you think about this game? Did anything speak to you about Final Fantasy Resonance? I'm not going to lie. I let it go right over my head. God. The second I heard Final F, I just, I zoned out. I zoned out. God. I can't win with this man. I can't win. Final. I flatlined the second I said Final Fantasy. He flatlined. Once somebody follows up an F with Final. Yeah.

[01:46:08] Yeah, Final Fantasy Resonance is billed in the showcase as a brand new Final Fantasy game. Lo and behold, it is not in fact a brand new Final Fantasy game. It is a reimagining of Final Fantasy Exodus. Oh, Exodus. Okay. Which is a mobile game. Okay. Okay. Okay. So they, well, I probably am saying that right, but let me just check.

[01:46:36] We just need a Strangers in Paradise remaster. That's all we need. Even though the game came out last gen. Yeah. It's, it's the, so Resonance is based on the first story arc of the discontinued mobile game Final Fantasy brave, brave Exius. Exius. Ex, Exius. See, and you want me to respect this series and they got titles like Exius. Everybody can't be Kojima with their revengeance. All right. Let's go to, it looks really cool. It's a 2.5 D.

[01:47:05] Um, I think Jono is going to get a lot of, uh, points for that. Probably. In the, in their league. So shout out to the boy. I think it's going to be good. I'm excited for it. You're not going to pick it up for it. I got to work through Baldur's gate three. You know what I mean? Oh, not to play. I mean for the league. You still got two spots. We'll see. We'll see. Soft. He, he, he doesn't, he doesn't believe. Soft. He doesn't believe in Final Fantasy. Are you going to pick it up? You got a spot left. No, I already use my spot. Yeah. Spot. You'll see. Okay. Oh, I'll see. I'll see.

[01:47:34] You pick up another, another fucking goddamn Ace combat game that I wasn't aware of. They did say zero was going to come bundled when you pre-order. It is bundled with, uh, wings and teeth. Does that mean technically I have a free pickup for zero? So zero scores, then I get points on it. That's not how that works. How sick would that be, right? I'd hate you. I'd hate you forever. But my Nintendo picks, a lot of it, honestly, a lot of the good stuff I saw at the Nintendo

[01:48:01] was third party, which I'm a hundred percent fine with because I don't have a Switch too. So I was like, hopefully the stuff they talk about here. I can play somewhere else. Okay. I am so curious about your first game. Yeah. Not to steal your thunder, but Dragon's Dogma 2 Darker Risen. Yeah. What are they going to do for Darker Risen? Like what is it? It's going to be a whole new like area. So it's like a, just a brand new content feature update. Okay. Interesting. In the first game, they had the Darker Risen, which they gave you Bitter Black Isle, Bitter

[01:48:31] Black, Bitter Back, one of the two. Anyways, it was a whole new area. So you still got to play the full base game, et cetera, et cetera. But once you got to a certain point in the story, it allowed you to go to a whole separate area where they had different creatures. Okay. They had creatures from the base game, but that were much stronger. And then they also had death that was there. It was like a big Grim Reaper character that was extremely hard to fight. Hell yeah. Very, very cool. So I'm expecting something similar in this one. They just straight up did it again.

[01:48:58] Dragon's Dogma 2 Darker Risen, which once again plays into the fact that Dragon's Dogma 2 is kind of like Dragon's Dogma 1. But the way they wanted it to be originally. So it looks very cool. Everything I've seen so far, game wise, et cetera, it looks fantastic. I mean, I'm super hyped for it. You know, the first Darker Risen was very, very fun. And most people would say is the definitive version of Dragon's Dogma if you're going to play be the same.

[01:49:24] Do you think we can get you and Matt Stormageddon back on the pod to give us an update on Darker Risen? Maybe. Yeah. If I'm not mistaken, I think Matt's going to be with us to do a little something else this year. We got something planned. We got something planned with them later this year. No spoilies. No spoilies. No spoilies. But it's going to be a good time. Next one. Kingdom Hearts 4. Listen. Listen. You and I. Get our floor.

[01:49:55] So aggressive. So aggressive. So aggressive. It's yelling in his home. Donald and Goofy are in hell. Okay? We're so back. Stop. You stop yelling. It's 1140 at night. We're so back. Stop yelling. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm excited. Listen. Kingdom Hearts 1. Sensational game. Kingdom Hearts 2. Generational game. S tier. Generational game. The high I feel from playing Kingdom Hearts 2 will carry me to my deathbed.

[01:50:24] Generational game. Kingdom Hearts 3. Absolute dog shit. Absolute dog shit. I'm never playing that fucking game. I could not beat it. I'm sorry Onyx. I couldn't beat it. I couldn't beat it. When did you tap out? When did you tap out? It was so early. I tapped out in Toy Story. I think I tapped out before you did then because I remember getting through the initial little spot, what have you. I got to the gummy ship and I was doing stuff for the gummy ship and I don't even know if I landed on the next planet. I was like, I can't play this right now. And right now it turned into like eight years.

[01:50:55] And all these sickos, all of our friends are like, oh, you got to get to the, you got to get through the Disney levels. You can get to the end of the game. It's got the best, best content. I love that. I love that. You got to get to the end of the game where it gets good. 80 hours deep. Oh, it gets good. Listen, Square Enix. You could just see Aqua in this game. Like nobody gives up. Sorry. No, Eric. Shout out to you, brother. Shout out to you. Shout out to Eric. Yes. Here's the thing.

[01:51:23] It's hard because as we all know, if you've, you know, listened to Eric in the guiding keys, which shout out to Eric for doing all that too. It was a fantastic listens and I'm excited to see if you were to continue it, you know, when four comes out. That being said, it's completely well known in the gaming community, the Kingdom Hearts lore

[01:51:47] and the hoops you have to jump through to fully be immersed in this like storyline, lore, et cetera. It's unfathomable. It's bonkers. You've listened to the guiding keys. Do you feel like you have a grapple? I have enough of a grapple. On what's going on. But if you ask me to like sit there and explain it, there's going to be some gaps. How many, how many masters of masters are there? Stop. Stop. At least two.

[01:52:20] It's just a lot to go through. And then now, you know, with four coming out, I'm like, man, trying to piece it all together is just so like mind numbing. So part of me is just like, all right, well, if I'm not going to get all the lore and story. Just let it wash over you. Yeah. Let it wash over you and enjoy the gameplay. Yeah. And three said, no, you're not going to enjoy the gameplay. No, because we fucking, we suck at this now. We lost all the recipes. No sauce. No sauce at all. Zero sauce. So hopefully four is able to kind of recapture the magic. I want to see some more really cool Disney worlds.

[01:52:48] We'll see if they're able, because that's another thing too. Is they stepped away. Moana. I guess they could do Moana, but like, I'm just, I'm just thinking to myself, like, where could they go Disney wise that they haven't already been to three times before? You know what I mean? I mean, like I said, the last one came out. When did three? I don't even remember off the top of my head. Three came out when I was in Japan. So I think it was around 2018. Yeah. So there's been at least 10 Disney movies since 2018. So they got a lot of stuff they can do. Encanto. Yeah. They can do Moana.

[01:53:18] They can do Encanto. They can do Elemental, which it looks like they're already. They can do Soul. Soul would be cool. Anything Disney Pixar. Yeah. Recently. What's the one with the emotions? Which one? Inside Out? Inside Out? Yeah. Yeah. I don't know if they did that for three or not. I can't recall. I don't think so. Did they do Brave for three? With Mierda? I don't know. Yeah. Maybe, but I don't think so. They could do Brave. They could do Coco. They could do Coco. They can go back if they wanted to and do some more old school. I'd love to see some more Hercules, Coliseum.

[01:53:48] Listen, fuck all that. I don't want none of that in my game. I think they did have. I want Squaw. Squaw. I want Cloud and Sephiroth. Here's the thing. Are we going to get Final Fantasy characters at all? Because three had like a complete lack thereof. Yeah. It's at the end of the game. They got it at the end of the game. I don't respect that. I don't respect it either. I don't respect it. I don't respect it either because I don't respect that scene in tomorrow. I'm sorry. I said it. Don't say that. I said it.

[01:54:13] The Friday Night Gamecast does not, we don't support that statement, that view. That was an individually owned view. That is not a representation of the company. He's washed. Absolutely ridiculous. Just like Kojima. That being said, jeez, the slander. Sorry. Sorry. I have to keep myself awake somehow. All that to be said, I am looking forward to Kingdom Hearts 4. Will I be, yes, very like tentatively, I'm going to listen to some reviews before I'm getting it. Very much so.

[01:54:43] This is not going to be a day one for me, but it will be a, I hope it does well so I can then grip my teeth through three and then play four. And that would be the plan. I didn't realize that was only my second one. Star Fox 2026, aka Nick's worst nightmare. They're furries in space. Jesus Christ. What are you going to do? What are you going to do? We were so close to the sun and then they had to ruin it with anthropomorphic legs. I like how it looks. It looks so cool. Oh, God.

[01:55:12] Listen, just because you're not a real one, you don't understand how it looked in the NES with the art. Just because I'm not a real one, the real one that played the original N64? Yeah, but they're not based off the N64. They're based off the SNES. Yeah, the fucked up, the demon puppets, right? Yes, those. Yeah, no, that's great. I love that. We like demon puppets. No, we do. We do. We do. Annabelle. Shout out to Annabelle. One of the best to ever do it. Best in the game. Never lost.

[01:55:42] She never lost a fight. 100 points in one night. Will Chamberlain. Better than Gojo. With the exception of Annabelle, of course. But Star Fox 2026, I think it's going to bang. It's going to do well. I have it in fantasy, so it has no choice but to do at least 90. So, okay. Did you look up the other Star Fox scores? Stop. Only one that matters is 64. Oh, okay, okay. Because it's only 64 again.

[01:56:12] You're right. But yeah, it looks really cool. The gameplay looks standard 64, but very nice slap of paint on it. So it looks very nice slapping a fresh coat of paint on it. I just wish it wasn't a rail shooter, man. No, it has to be a rail shooter. I don't want this thing to be just a loosey-goosey. It's got to be Ace Combat. Like, give this game some fucking sauce, man. No one's trying to play that trash. That shit is... Stop. No one's trying to play it. Imagine just cranking like a 6G turn in a Q-jet. What are they called? Is it a Q-jet?

[01:56:42] What are their... No, they're type. Q-planes? They're like... Anyway, it doesn't fucking matter. The Star Fox Space Gliders, man. Just imagine... Star Fox Space Gliders. Imagine just doing dogfighting in those. Oh, that would be so cool. And we've gotten that kind of stuff in space before. The R-wing. I was called the A-wing. That's not like Star Wars. The Q-jet. I got the 007 on the brain. But, man. Whatever. It's Star Fox 64. It's going to be fine. It's going to hit. It's going to hit, buddy.

[01:57:13] I'm just excited for Slippy the Toad to get lit up like he always does. No. That's the boy. Does he get lit up? He constantly gets lit up. God. He constantly gets lit up. It's going to be fun. But the Landmaster section, that's what I'm looking forward to. The Landmaster. Where he's walking around. Where you're in the tank. Oh, yeah. The tank. Yeah, buddy. It looks good. So, do the planes not turn instead of the tanks or is that Star Fox Zero? It must be Zero where they turn it. I think the Landmaster's a completely separate. It's a separate vehicle. Okay. Got it. Got it.

[01:57:40] Well, Star Fox 2026. It looked good. The year is 2026. The year is 1994. We're getting all the same games. The same games. We don't know how to recreate the magic. Listen. People say they want new things. And what happens when you give them something old and shiny? Slop it up. They just slap it up. They just slap it all up. It's our fault as millennials. It is our fault. It's our fault because we haven't raised the standards for these companies.

[01:58:10] That's true. We were built off of it. Slap a two or say, you know, 2026. Like the year it comes out into the, you know, little background of it. Gangbusters. Gangbusters. Game of the year. Yep. Anyway, that is going to be it for tonight, folks. I want to give a big thank you to all the folks who have listened to us yap about this stuff for as long as we have. This has been a really fun episode. Will and I are going to be a little sleep deprived tomorrow, but it was worth it. For y'all. For y'all. For everyone in the audience.

[01:58:40] We do it for you. If you want to support us further, please feel free to leave us a rating review on your podcasting platform of choice, whether that's Apple Podcasts, Spotify, GoodPods, any of the pod catchers that you enjoy out there. I think Pod Addict is the big one for our listener base. So we love all of our listeners there. I hope you really enjoy this episode. So, Will, if people want to find you in our wing and pilot around the universe to save Scott

[01:59:08] McCloud or whatever Fox's dad's name is. Scott McCloud. Where can they find you? I guess you can find me hanging out with Scott McCloud. Getting kidnapped. I don't know. He's just a dude. He's got his fucking aviator glasses on. Fox McCloud's name is James. James McCloud. Oh, great. Yeah. Some other white guy. It's a lit fighter pilot name. But yes, you can find me hanging out with James McCloud. It wasn't far off.

[01:59:37] In the R wing. And we'll be listening to a little bit of Kenny Loggins. Right into the danger zone. Again, it'd be a blast. But if you can't find me there, perfectly fine. You would just have to catch me on Twitter and be at RealKingZozoTai. That's R-E-A-L-K-I-N-G-Z-O-S-O-T-A-I. And with that, everyone, please keep gaming.

[02:00:05] Keep cranking those G-turns. And we'll see you next Friday night. Deuces.